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619736, 7223 I EKBRAWY __
Michigan State
lhnkrersmny

 

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

A CRITIQUE
OF THE MARXIST AND NEOCLASSICAL

THEORIES OF THE SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOR
presentedby

Zohreh Emami-Khoyi

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

.flocmmL degree in _Ecnnnmics.

a /
Z WWW \I«}"fl//flt/ fl

Margy/professor

 

Due August 8, 1985

MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

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V I/

A CRITIQUE
OF THE MARXIST AND NEOCLASSICAL

THEORIES OF THE SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOR

BY

Zohreh Emami—Khoyi

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Economics

1985

 

ABSTRACT
A CRITIQUE

OF THE MARXIST AND NEOCLASSICAL
THEORIES OF THE SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOR

BY

Zohreh Emami-Khoyi

The phenomenon of the sexual division of labor, namely,
the predominant and exclusive division of tasks between men
and women, is the theoretical topic of this dissertation.
Its significance as a topic for economic investigation rests
with the fact that the sexual division of labor has
persisted throughout the history of human society — such
that its understanding might begin to contribute to the
elimination of sexual inequality, and with the possibility
that a focused and coherent understanding of the sexual
division of labor might well lead to revision and
reconsideration of the economic theory itself. Since a
critical approach is particularly appropriate to a topic in
which fundamental theoretical questions have not been
resolved and definite conclusions have yet to be reached,
this work is devoted to the critique of two main economic
theories of the sexual division of labor, namely, Marxism
and neoclassicism. It argues that both the Marxian and the
neoclassical theories suffer from problems of reductionism,

circularity, and functionalism, precisely because they

 

attempt to provide strictly economic explanation of the
phenomenon of the sexual division of labor. Furthermore,
these inadequacies ultimately lead these theories in the
direction of naturalistic explanations which ignore the
social, cultural, and historical aspects of the process of
gender constitution essential to an understanding of the
sexual division of labor. Therefore, though making positive
contributions to an understanding of the sexual division of
labor by recognizing the economic necessity of household
production and the economic rationality inherent in the
family, these theories remain incomplete without
incorporation of some analysis of noneconomic power—
relationships. This work concludes that the Marxian theory

shows more promise in developing a complete theory of the

sexual division of labor, since it is more responsive to
considerations of power and self-consciously seeks to
develop noneconomic frameworks of analysis. Neoclassical

theory, on the other hand, neglects power considerations and

does not go beyond strictly economic categories.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...................................... 1
Chapter I: Marx and Engels ........................ 5
Chapter II: The Contemporary Marxists .............. 32
Chapter III: The Chicago School Neoclassicists ..... 57
Chapter IV: The Liberal Neoclassicists ............. 83
Chapter V: Conclusion and Critique.. ............... 102

Bibliography ....................................... 142

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The theoretical problem of this work is the sexual
division of labor, i.e., the predominant and exclusive
division of tasks between men and women in society. This
problem is significant for several reasons. First, though
the sexual division of tasks has varied at different points
of time and at any point in time in different societies, the
existence of some sexual division of labor has been a
persistent phenomenon in human society. Second, one of the
most dramatic changes in the contemporary history of
capitalist societies has been the increased labor force
participation of women of both working-class and middle-
class backgrounds. This dramatic change has occurred
simultaneously with other profound transformations in the
socio—economic structures of the industrialized societies,
namely, the ascendancy of monopoly capitalism, the decline
of farming and competitive, small, family enterprises; the
penetration of capitalism into different facets of the home;
and the emergence of new forms of social interaction as
implied by changing birth, death, marriage, and divorce
rates. However, coincident with all of these changes,
reproduction of the sexual division of labor and of sexual
inequality has continued. There still is a 40% gap between

the earnings of women and men, and women are still

 

occupationally segregated, while experiencing higher rates
of unemployment than men. Moreover, the sexual division of
labor has not been confined to the sphere of wage work. In
non-wage work such as farming, self-employment in
manufacturing or trading, and domestic work, e.g., child and
house care, the sexual division of labor also has been a
continuing phenomenon. Third, an understanding of the sexual
division of labor is crucial to any attempt to analyze,
understand, and eliminate sexual inequality. Fourth, since
sexual division of labor has been a relatively neglected
problem in economic theory, a focused historical and
theoretical investigation into the issue has the potential
of bringing into question not only previous understandings
of this phenomenon but also the accepted economic analyses
of the division of labor in the economy. The implications of
the study of the sexual division of labor therefore go
beyond issues concerning women per se and are significant
for economic theory and an understanding of the economy as a
whole.

This work will approach the theoretical problem of the
sexual division of labor through a critique of the two
traditions in economic theory that have made contributions
to an understanding of this issue. The approach here is
critical specifically because the topic is one in which
fundamental theoretical questions have not been resolved and
definite theoretical conclusions have yet to be reached. The

questions themselves are in a process of theoretical

 

 

development. Thus, a critical approach that articulates the
problems and questions in the economic theories of the
sexual division of labor is particularly appropriate.

The two schools of economic thought that are examined
here are the Marxist and the neoclassical. Chapter I
presents and critiques the analysis of the sexual division
of labor and the subordinate position of women developed by
Marx and Engels. Chapter II critically traces the
development of contemporary Marxist theory through an
examination of the reactions of recent Marxist theorists to
the limitations of orthodox Marxism discussed in Chapter I.
With respect to the neoclassical school, two camps in this
tradition can be distinguished according to their views
concerning the possibility of economic reform enacted by
capitalist government. Chapter III critiques the
conservative camp of neoclassicism, namely, the Chicago
School, with respect to its treatment of the sexual division
of labor and what has more generally been called to as the
"new home economics". In Chapter IV the Chicago School's
”new home economics" is contrasted with liberal
neoclassicists' analysis of women's labor supply. Chapter IV
closes with an evaluation of liberal neoclassicism’s reform
orientation and its fundamental assumptions about the nature
of power in society. The final Chapter, after a brief
summary of the Marxist and neoclassical literature on the
sexual division of labor, compares and contrasts these two

schools with respect to their theories of the position of

 

 

women in the economy and the sexual division of labor. The

chapter concludes with an assessment of the state of our
knowledge on this topic in light of the understanding
acquired through the examination of the economic theories of
Marxism and neoclassicism. It is argued that an awareness of
the limitations of a specifically economic treatment of the
sexual division of labor leads us to a greater understanding
of what we do know and still need to learn about this

phenomenon.

 

CHAPTER I

MARX AND ENGELS

In the midst of the Industrial Revolution there
emerged a social philosopher, Karl Marx, whose influence on
socialist thought has survived to the present. Together with
Friedrich Engels, Marx expounded the philosophy of
historical materialism on which he based his study of
capitalism. According to this perspective, although all
social institutions and intellectual traditions are related
through a complex structure of cause and effect
relationships. A society's mode of production and thereby
its material economic base is the most important influence
in determining. social institutions and the ideological,
religious, and intellectual traditions of society. Marx
identified his notion of the mode of production by dividing
it into two elements, namely, the forces of production and
the relations of production. The forces of production were
in turn defined as the general level of technology,
including production skills and knowledge, and tools,
equipment, and factories. The relations of production were
for Marx the social relations between the human beings in
society in terms of their relationship to the means of

production. Marx called the mode of production the

 

 

foundation or the economic base, while the modes of thought
(including ethical, religious, and intellectual ideas) and
the social institutions he identified as the society's
superstructure.

Marx was a methodological collectivist since by
referring to the relations of production he was interested
in class -— as a collection of human beings defined by their
relationship to the means of production -- as his category
for analyzing the economic structure of society. Viewing the
class structure of society as the most important single
aspect of the mode of production, Marx proclaimed the
antagonism between classes as the propelling' force in
history. In each of the four separate economic systems that
Marx identified -- 1) primitive communal, 2) slave, 3)
feudal, 4) capitalist -- the contradictions that develop
between the forces of production and the relations of
production show themselves in the form of class struggle.
Within his historical approach Marx employed the dialectical
method of identifying the nature of conflicts and
contradictions between classes as the dynamic sources of
struggle and historical change.

Marx believed that, although in all pre-capitalist
economic systems the intensification of class struggle had
destroyed one class system only to replace it with another
based on the exploitation of a large class by a new ruling
class, capitalism and thereby the class of capitalists would

be overthrown by the proletariat which would eventually

 

 

 

establish a classless society. According to Marx capitalism
has two features that distinguish it from the systems prior
to it. First, there is a class of owners and a class of
workers who are separated from the means of 'production.
Second, under capitalism the market extends into all human
relations.

Marx's normative analysis can be clearly identified
through his moral condemnations of capitalism which he saw
as a system in which people cannot develop their
potentialities. Humans, according to Marx, are different
from animals because through their work they can shape and
control their environment. It is through work that humans
refine and develop their senses and intellect and achieve
pleasure and self-realization. In pre-capitalist systems,
despite the existence of exploitative class structures,
humans could achieve this self-realization through their
work. Since these exploitative class relations were at the
same time personal and paternalistic, the purpose of work
was not merely making money.

All this changes with the advent of capitalism.
Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto:
. the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got
the upper hand, has put an end to all
feudal patriarchal, idyllic relations. It
has pitilessly torn asunder the motley
feudal ties that bound man to his "natural
superiors," and has left remaining no
other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous "cash
payment." It has drowned the most heavenly

ecstasies of religious fervor, of
chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine

 

sentimentalism, in the icy water of
egoistical calculation. It has resolved
personal worth into exchange value . . .1
Marx condemned in the capitalist system this
degradation and dehumanization of the working class, which
he termed alienation.2 Marx's analysis and method were both
positive and normative. While in his theoretical endeavor he
attempted to analyze the "laws of motion" of capitalism, he
also claimed that "The philosophers have only interpreted
the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change
it."3
Both Marx's historical materialist method and his
analysis of capitalism have been criticized as economic
determinism.4 More specifically, for having emphasized the
economic base and the category of class, Marx has been
accused of underestimating the influence of ideological (or
what he calls superstructural) factors on the development of
society. The dichotomy of base/superstructure, has been
considered responsible for his reductionist
characterization of the other forms of oppression present in
capitalism such as racism and sexism. In this chapter we
examine Marx's historical materialist analysis of the
position of women and thereby the sexual division of labor
in capitalist society.
Friedrich Engels referred to The Origins 9f the Family,
Private Property, and the State as a "bequest," a "debt I

5
owe to Marx." In the winter of 1880—1881 Marx read Lewis

 

Morgan's Ancient Society, 93 Researches in the Lines 9;

 

 

 

Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism pg

Civilization, and was struck by its relevance to his own

 

theory. But ill health prevented his doing more than take
ninety-eight pages of notes on the book. In 1884, a year
after Marx's death, Engels published the work that his
friend apparently had wished to write.6

It was Engels, therefore, who attempted a systematic
exposition of the historical materialistic approach to the
question of woman's status and the sexual division of labor
in modern society, using as his basis the anthropological
work of Lewis Morgan. He employed Morgan's three-fold
classification of the stages of history -- savagery, marked
by gathering and hunting; barbarism, marked by animal
breeding and agriculture; civilization, marked by art and
industry -- to demonstrate how women's position deteriorates
outside the communist structure. In savagery, group marriage
or unrestricted sexual freedom prevails, paternity is
unknown, and only the female [line or Mother Right is
recognized. The childbearing function, and hence woman, is
held in high esteem. In this communist structure everyone
contributes to the economy, no one is dependent, and there
is no distinction between the public and the domestic. With
barbarism the pairing family emerges and, to insure
paternity, women are held to strict fidelity. The division
of labor becomes segregated, since without the need to hunt
men turn to flocks and crops. Private property and paternity

effect the overthrow of Mother Right, and women are rendered

 

10

economically dependent. With civilization, monogamy prevails
and the patriarchal family solidifies male supremacy. Thus
the first class struggle emerges as antagonism among the
sexes. Engels believed that wives are essentially slaves,
part of men's property just as are land and cattle. Engels
predicted that only under socialism, with the abolition of
private property, would the relationship between men and
women change. Wives would no longer belong to husbands. When
marriage is determined by love, not economy, both marriage
and divorce will become much simpler.

In the Preface to The Origins 9; 3h; Family Engels
pointed out that up to 1861, which was the year of the
publication of Bachofen's "Mutterrecht" (Maternal Law),
there had been no systematic attempt to study the history of
the family. Indeed, prior to 1861 the patriarchal form of
the family "was not only without further comment considered
as the most ancient, but also as identical with the family
of our times. No historical development of the family was
even recognized."7 Even though historical cases of monogamy,
oriental polygamy, and Indo-Tibetan polyandry were known,
these forms were never arranged in any historical order and
were simply treated as "queer customs" without any
connections.

According to Engels, Bachofen's work was the first
attempt to systematically develop the history of the family.
And, although Engels found Bachofen's volume somewhat

troublesome and at times frustrating because of its biased

 

 

11
nature stemming from Bachofen's mystical conceptions, he
nevertheless believed that, "all this does not curtail the
8
value of his fundamental work." According to Engels,

Bachofen was the first to question the assumption of a
timeless and ahistorical patriarchal form of the family "by
the demonstration that ancient classical literature points
out a multitude of traces proving the actual existence among

Greeks and Asiatics of other sexual relations before
9
monogamy." Engels agrees with Bachofen that with economic

development undermining what he calls "the old communism"
and with increasing population, "traditional sexual

relations lost their innocent character suited to the
10
primitive forest," and the new form of relation that

emerged became more debasing and oppressive to women.
Engels' normative position was that:

[The monogamous family] is founded on male
supremacy for the pronounced purpose of
breeding children of indisputable paternal
lineage. The latter is required, because
these children shall later on inherit the
fortune of their father. The monogamous
family is distinguished from the pairing
family by the far greater durability of
wedlock, which can no longer be dissolved
at the pleasure of either party. As a

rule, it is only the man who can still
dissolve it and cast off his wife. The
privilege of conjugal faithlessness

remains sanctioned for men at least by
custom (the Code Napoleon concedes it
directly to them, as long as they do not
bring their concubines into the houses of

their wives). This privilege is more and
more enjoyed with the increasing
development of society. If the woman

remembers the ancient sexual practices and
attempts to revive them, she is punished
more severely than ever. 11

 

12

The monogamous family, represents the subjugation of one sex
by the other as far as Engels was concerned. Indeed, rather
than being the highest form of marriage and a reconciliation
between the husband and wife, the monogamous family reflects
an antagonism between the two sexes that is unprecedented in
history. Engels again mixed historical and normative
analysis in order to conclude that

The first class antagonism appearing in

history coincides with the development of

the antagonism of man and wife in

monogamy, and the first class oppression

with that of the female sex by the male

sex. Monogamy was a great historical

progress. But by the side of slavery and

private property it marks at the same time

that epoch which, reaching down to our

days, takes with all progress also a step

backwards, relatively speaking, and

develops the welfare and advancement of

one by the woe and submission of the

other.12
In the monogamous family, this cellular form of civilized
society, Engels sought to understand the contrasts and
contradictions inherent in this society.

Accepting Morgan's analysis in Ancient Society, Engels
argued that the victory of the monogamous family by no means
implies the complete defeat and disappearance of "the old

13
relative freedom of sexual intercourse". This freedom for
both sexes, however, is transformed in civilization into
what Engels, following Morgan, called hetaerism by which
they meant sexual intercourse of men with unmarried women
outside of the monogamous family. This hetaerism, which

according to Engels flourishes during the whole period of

civilization in many different forms, tends more and more

 

 

13

towards open prostitution.

To Engels hetaerism is a social institution which
continues the old sexual freedom, for the benefit however,
of men only. Even when denounced, and it is only nominally
denounced, this denunciation strikes by no means the men who
indulge in it, but only the women. In fact, it is not only
permitted for men, but it is assiduously practiced by the of
the ruling class. Women, however, are "ostracized and cast
out by society, in order to proclaim once more the

fundamental law of unconditional male supremacy over the
14
female sex."

Thus, Engels was led to see a second contradiction
inherent in the nature of monogamy itself.

By the side of the husband, who is making
his life pleasant by hetaerism, stands the
neglected wife. And you cannot have one
side of the contradiction without the
other, just as you can not have the whole
apple after eating half of it.
Nevertheless this seems to have been the
idea of the men, until their wives taught
them a lesson. Monogamy introduces two
permanent social characters that were
formerly unknown: the standing lover of
the wife and the cuckold. The men had
gained the victory over the women but the
vanquished magnanimously provided the
coronation. In addition to monogamy and
hetaerism, adultery became an unavoidable
social institution — denounced, severely
punished, but irrepressible. 15

Therefore, Engels saw in the monogamous family a clear
expression of the conflict between men and women created by
the exclusive supremacy of men, a miniature picture of the

contrasts and contradiction of society as a whole. Engels

 

14

quoted Marx to prove that indeed they are in general
agreement on this point:

The modern family contains the germ not

only of slavery (servitus), but also of
serfdom, because it has from the start a
relation to agriculture service. It

comprises in miniature all those contrasts
that later on develop more broadly in
society and the state.16

In both the advent of the pairing and the transition of
this family form to the monogamous patriarchal family,
Engels saw the reliability of paternal lineage guaranteed by
securing the faithfulness of the wife and delivering women
absolutely into the power of men. Indeed, for Engels the
monogamous family has the specific character of being
monogamy for women alone and not for men.

Engels saw the formal and informal inequalities between
men and women being caused in the final analysis by the
economic dependence and oppression of women. More
specifically, in the old communistic societies the
administration of the household (which comprised many adults
and children) was entrusted to women, and this was as much a
social and public function as the job of providing food
which was for men. With the advent of the patriarchal, and
especially the monogamous, family women lose their equal
social—economic footing in public life. Women retain their
job of administering the household, while the administration
of the household loses its public character, and stops being

a concern of society. Indeed, woman's job in the household

acquires the character of a private service. In fact, even

 

15

with the availability of access to social production for
some women, "they remain excluded from public production and
cannot earn anything, if they fulfill their duties in the
private service of the family: or that they are unable to
attend their family duties, if they wish to participate in
public industries and earn a living independently."17

Modern society is composed of "molecules" in the form
of monogamous families, while the foundation of modern
family is the overt and covert domestic slavery of women.
The man with his public responsibility of earning a living
and supporting the family has obtained a superior position.
"In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman represents
the proletariat."18 Thus, for Engels, achieving legal
equality between the sexes is only the prerequisite for
their emancipation. Legal equality simply offers the
battleground on which the struggle for the re—introduction
of the whole female sex into the public industries can be
fought, and this can only be accomplished when the
monogamous family ceases to be the industrial unit of
society.

Engels predicted a social revolution that would abolish
the historical basis of the economic foundation of both
monogamy and prostitution. This impending revolution, by
socializing the means of production and thus abolishing the
conditions of accumulation of wealth in only a few hands,

would reduce and ultimately eliminate the need for private

inheritance which is the foundation upon which monogamy is

 

16

based. Since for Engels the legal and social oppression of
women, as portrayed in the historic monogamous family is
ultimately founded on the economic dependency of women in
class society, the question that he had to answer is whether
monogamy would disappear when the class system of capitalism
is abolished. Engels' reply was that not only would monogamy
not disappear but it would become perfectly realized. He
argued that with the transformation of society and
collectivization of the means of production, wage labor and
thus the proletariat itself would disappear. With the
elimination of wage labor, the necessity for a certain
number of women to surrender for money through prostitution
will also disappear. With the abolition of prostitution
monogamy will not only not go out of existence but it will
finally apply to men as well as to women.

Engels claimed that after the revolution the monogamous
family would cease being the fundamental economic unit of
society, thereby, radically changing the situation of both
men and women. The functions that were formerly entrusted to
the private unit of the family, such as care and basic
education of children and private housekeeping, would become
matters of public responsibility and a social industry. This
would finally be the time when "a new element becomes
active, an element which at best existed only in the germ at
the time when monogamy developed: individual sexlove.”19

Engels believed that what he calls sexlove is by its

very nature exclusive and thus by nature monogamous. Hence,

 

17

once the economic conditions are removed that have tended to
make monogamy apply to women alone by forcing them to submit
tothe customary disloyalty of men, women will be placed on
an equal footing with men. Thus, it was Engels' belief that
rather than giving rise to a gradual increase in
unconventional intercourse and making women polyandrous, the
realization of individual sexlove would make men truly
monogamous.

Indeed, society would finally see monogamy with none of
the peculiarities and distortions that are stamped upon it
because of its rise out of private property relations. More
specifically, when male supremacy, which is the result of
man's economic independence and superiority, vanishes, there
would disappear with it the very basis of male supremacy in
monogamy. The direction of causation is from economic change
to the establishment of equality and thereby elimination of
supremacy, subordination, and dependency.

What we may anticipate about the
adjustment of sexual relations after the
impending downfall of capitalist
production is mainly of a negative nature
and mostly confined to elements that will
disappear. But what will be added? That
will be decided after a new generation has
come to maturity: a race of men who never
in their lives have had any occasion for
buying with money or other economic means
of power the surrender of women; a race of
women who have never had any occasion for
surrendering to any man for any other
reason but love, or for refusing to
surrender to their lover for fear of
economic consequences. Once such people
are in the world, they will not give a
moment's thought to what we today believe
should be their course. They will follow
their own practice and fashion their own

 

18

public opinion about the individual
practice of every person - only this and
nothing more. 20
While Engels was the one who in Th; Origin 2; Egg
Family formulated the Marxian theory of the family, there
are partial statements on the family and women's
exploitation in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,
The Communig; Manifesto,The German Ideology,and Capital.21
Marx and Engels stated their position on the bourgeois
family in The Communist Manifesto, where they saw the family

relation as having been reduced to a mere money relation.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere

instrument of production. On what
foundation is the present family based? On
capital, on private gain . . . . The

bourgeois clap-trap about the family and
education, about hallowed corelation of
parent and child, becomes all the more
disgusting the more by the action of
modern industry, all family ties among the
proletarians .are torn asunder, and than
children transformed into simple articles
of commerce and instruments of labor. 22

The relations of private property become the mode of
exchange. The development of these bourgeois priorities
transform social relations in the family and, as Marx made
clear in The German Ideology, the family, which was seen as
the only truly social relationship, becomes a subordinate
need.23 The concerns of private property and possession
pervade man-woman relations. In "On The Jewish Question,"
Marx wrote: "The species relation itself between man and
woman etc., becgmes an object of commerce. The woman is

bought and sold." The mentality of "having" twists species

relationships into those of ownership and domination, and

 

19

marriage into prostitution.

Marx saw women's problem as arising from their status
as mere instruments of reproduction and the solution in the
socialist revolution. In the Manifesto Marx and Engels wrote
that "the abolition of the present system of production must
bring with it the abolition of the community of women
springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution, both

25
public and private."

Marx did not propose the abolition of the family. He
denounced the incompatibility of the family, such as he
observed it, with the woman working outside the home. He
deplored the consequences of the hard life of the working
woman for rearing her children, for parental authority, and
for family morality. And he certainly did not consider the
European family as it existed at that time to be the only
possible form of conjugal union. However, what is harmful
for children and parents alike is the destruction of the
family without any new structure being offered to replace
it. Even in its most depressing aspects, therefore,
capitalism represents an important step toward a new type of
family:

However terrible and disgusting,
therefore, the dissolution, under the
capitalist system, of the old family ties
may appear, nevertheless, modern industry,
by assigning as it does an important part
in the process of production outside the
domestic sphere to women, to young
persons, and to children of both sexes,
creates a new economic foundation for a

higher form of the family and of the
relations between the sexes. 26

 

20

Apropos of Marx's economic determinism, in the final
instance, capitalism not only creates the conditions of
existence of the present family with all its problems; but
it also creates the conditions under which the nature of
this family can be transformed into a "higher form".

Marx was far from preaching anarchic sexual freedom;
for him that meant making woman even more the mere object of
man's pleasure than she is already. He rejected that vulgar
communism which contemplates the establishment of a
community of women.27 Strengthening woman strengthens man as
well, for he who obtains gratification from an object, who
has no need to enter into relations with another human
being, loses all humanity. Thus, for Marx the genuine
liberation of women was part of the more general process of
humanization of the entire species. The relationship that
exists between man and woman is a good indication of the
state of human essence.

Since Marx never considered the woman problem as
something isolated from society, whatever its structural

type, he steadfastly refused to accept simple reformist

measures that proposed to protect women or provide sugar

coating for their real suffering. It is rather the root
28

causes of the degradation of women which he sought. He

sees bourgeois institutions as parasitic to the core: the

bourgeoisie make the laws for others to observe. The
transgression of the laws is the bourgeoisie's special

talent. They violate the laws of marriage, family, and

 

21

property, yet these institutions remain intact and form the
very foundation of class society. Since the only real ties
existing within the bourgeois family are those of boredom,
money, and adultery, an infraction of its outward juridical
form is in fact of no importance. On the contrary, it is
maintained as it exists in fact, not as it appears within
the juridical superstructure. This is the line Marx took in
countering the charge that communists want to introduce a
community of women. Since for the bourgeoisie, he explained,
woman is a mere instrument of production, and the communists
propose to introduce common ownership of the instruments of
production, they conclude from this that communists want to
introduce a community of women. But for the bourgeoisie such
a community already exists. "Our bourgeois, not content with
having the wives and daughters of the proletarians at their
disposal... takes the greatest pleasure in seducing each
other's wives."29

Thus, for Marx the determining factor of woman's social
existence derived from a system of produCtion premised upon
the oppression of class by class —— a system which alienates
and corrupts the body as well the mind. The solution, then,
lies in the destruction of this phase of the historical, or
rather prehistorical development of humankind. Therefore,
Marx believed that women, like men, would only attain true

freedom under socialism.

 

22

Evaluation:

Marx saw the bourgeois family as an instrument of
capitalist society with no dimension particular unto itself.
Woman's oppression is her exploitation in a class society
through bourgeois marriage and the- family. Woman is
perceived as just another victim, undistinguished from the
proletariat in general, of the class division of labor. The
sexual division of labor, as the definition of roles,
purposes, activities, etc., had no independent existence for
Marx. He did not understand, for instance, that the sexual
division of labor in society assigns. noncreative and
isolative work particularly for women. As a result, Marx
perceives the exploitation of men and women as deriving from
the same source and assumed that their oppression could be
understood in the same structural terms.

It has since been argued however that capital and
private property are not the cause of the oppression of
women qua women, and that in fact women's inferior status
predates both private property and capitalism. In this View,
the end of capitalism and private property alone will not
result in the end of women's oppression. It might very well
be that in communist society, where all are to achieve
species existence, life would still be structured by a
sexual division of labor which would entail different life
options for men and women. Sex roles would preassign
tasks to women which would necessitate continued alienation

30
and isolation.

 

23

In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels discussed the
division of labor in early pre-capitalist society in
familial terms. The first division of labor was the
"natural" division of labor in the family through the act of
child—breeding. The act of child-breeding, therefore, began
the division of labor. It is through this act that the first
appearance of property arose within the family. For Marx and
Engels, this is when the wife and child became slaves of the
husband.

This latent slavery in the family, though
still very crude, is the first property,
but even at this stage it corresponds
perfectly to the definition of modern
economists who call it the power of
disposing of the labor power of others.
Division of labor and private property are
moreover identical expressions . . .31

Here are the seeds of an early, although crude, insight
into the nature of the sexual division of labor, although
there is no discussion of it as such. What weakens and
finally limits the insight is that for Marx and Engels the
division of labor deriving from the act of child—breeding is
coincidental and identical with the birth of private
property: "division of labor and private property are

32
moreover identical expressions." The division of labor has
no specific quality of its own; property arising from a
division of labor in the act of procreation is not
differentiated from property arising from the relations of

capital. Reproduction and production are seen as one, as

they come to be analyzed in relation to the capitalist

24

division of labor in society. There is no notion here that
inequalities might arise from the act of child-breeding and
childrearing. Although reproduction was acknowledged as the
first source of the division of labor, it never received
specific further examination. The German Ideology presented,
then, a skeletal analysis of women's condition as it changes
through material conditions.

The division of labor is at this stage

still very elementary and is confined to a

further extension of the natural division

of labor imposed by the family.33

The division of labor "imposed by the family" is here

spoken of as "naturalh, and whether-this means necessary or
good it is a division which was accepted by Marx and Engels.
Here, then, the division of labor in the family is not
viewed as reflective of the economic society which defines

and surrounds it —- as it is in the later Communist

Manifesto -- but rather at this early stage Marx and Engels

 

saw the family structuring the society and its division of
labor. Marx and Engels' analysis of the family continued:
"there develops the division of labor in the sexual act,
then that division of labor which develops spontaneously or
naturally by virtue of natural predigposition (e.g.,

physical strength) needs, accidents, etc."

In The Origins g; the Family, Engels repeated the theme

 

developed in The German Ideology: that the "first division

 

of labor is that between man and woman for child-
35
breeding." The first class antagonism thus arose with the

antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, but

 

25
. 36
what this antagonism is based on is never made clear.
Engels' claim was that the first class antagonism

accompanied (arose with) the antagonism between man and
woman. One would not think that the antagonism referred to
is one of class. Yet he ultimately wrote of the conflict
between man and woman as class conflict. The man represents
the bourgeoisie within the family, the wife represents the
proletariat.37 But the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are
respectively positions of power and powerlessness deriving
from a relation to the economic means of production, not to
the act of reproduction. By categorizing men and women as
classes and using the category of class as a metaphor, the
relations of reproduction are subsumed under the relations
of production. It is contradictory that Engels acknowledged
male-female relations within the family as defining the
division of labor in society and yet completely subsumed
them under the categories of analysis related to production.
He offered no explanation that could resolve this dilemma
because it stands outside the terms of his analysis.

Engels acknowledged that the division of labor emanated
from the family to society. Yet his categories of analysis
explaining the slavery of women in the family derived
entirely from the relations of production. These categories
simply take the form of metaphors. The family comes to be
defined by the historical economic modes; it does not itself

take part in defining the economy as well as the society,

and it is no longer spoken of as a source of the division of

 

26

labor coincident with economic relations. Economic existence
comes to determine the family. Hence, Engels forgot his own
analysis of the "first division of labor" and assumed that
the family will disintegrate and the first division of labor
will simply disappear with the elimination of capitalism
instead of analyzing how the family itself comes to support
an economic mode. Although he acknowledged the problem of
women's existence within a private domestic sphere, he saw
this reflecting the relations of production rooted in
private property. Women's activity in reproduction, which
limits her activity in production, is not seen as
problematic, as socially derivative.

The family has become a microcosm of the political
economy for Engels."38 The bourgeoisie- and proletariat
became metaphors: the man being the bourgeois and the woman
the proletariat. Interestly Engels did not use the
metaphoric categories of male as bourgeois and female as
proletariat outside of the family. There people were
assigned class positions according to their relation to the
means of production, not their sex. He used different
criteria inside and outside the family to define membership
in a class. In the family, economic dependency and
subordination distinguish class membership while in the
economy it is relationship to the means of production. If
these categories were built on like bases of power, the same
criterion would be applicable both in and out of the family.

And if one wants to say that the family is economic, there

 

 

27
are evidently still other considerations involved. If this
were not so, then he would not have (1) class divisions in
the family as bourgeois-male/proletariat-female, and (2)

class divisions in society in terms of ownership of the
means of production. Even though, for Engels these
ultimately meant the same thing, what do they say about the
relations of the family and capitalism?

Most of the time Engels worked from the simple equation
that oppression equals exploitation. Even though Engels
recognized that the family conceals domestic slavery, he
believed at the same time that there are no differences, in
kind between the domestic slavery of the wife and the wage
slavery of the worker under capitalism. They are both
derived from capitalism. The real equality of women would
come with the end of exploitation by capital and the
transference of private housework to public industry. But
given his lack of understanding of the sexual division of
labor and the hierarchical sexual ordering of society per‘
se, even the public domestic world would, for Engels, most
probably remain woman's work.

In conclusion, the analysis sketched by Marx and Engels
in The German Ideology, and then further developed by Engels

in The Origins g: the Family, Private Propertyy and the

 

State, reveals their belief that the family, at some time in
the historic past, structured the division of labor in
society, and that this division of labor reflected the

division of labor in the act of procreation. Initially, the

28

family structure defined the structure of society:

According to the material conception, the
determining factor in history is, in the
final instance, the production and
reproduction of immediate life. This,
again, is of a two-fold character: on the
one side, the production of the means of
existence, of food, clothing and shelter
and the tools necessary for that
production; on the other side, the
production of human beings themselves, the
propagation of the species. The social
organization under which the people of a
particular historical epoch and a
particular country live is determined by
both kinds of production; by the stage of
development of labor on the one hand and
of the family on the other.39

This perception is lost, however, in the discussion of the
family in capitalist society, for here the family comes to
be viewed as just another part of the superstructure,
totally reflective of class society and relations of
production. The point is not that the family does not
reflect society, but that through both its patriarchal
structure and patriarchal ideology the family and the need
for reproduction also structure society. This reciprocal
relationship between the family and society, and between
production and reproduction, defines the life of women.40
The study of women's situation then, must deal with both
sexual and economic material conditions if we are to

understand sexual oppression as well as economic

exploitation.

FOOTNOTES

1. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Communist
Manifesto," in The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by R. Tucker,
(New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1972). p. 337.

2. Bertall Ollman, Alienation: Marx's Conception 9;
Man ip Capitalist Society, (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1971).

3. Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," in The Marx-
Engels Reader, edited by R. Tucker, (New York: W. W. Norton
Company, 1972), p. 343.

 

 

4. M. M. Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation 9;
History, (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1965).
5. Friedrich Engels, The Origins g; the Family

 

 

Private Property and the State, (Chicago: Charles H.
Kerr and Company: 1902), p. 10.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Martha Osborne, figmgp lg Western Thoughg, (New
York: Random House, 1979).

7. Engels, The Origins, pp; gigg, p. 13.
8. gpggy, p. 15.

9. gpggy, p.'16.

‘10. Ibid., p. 54.

11. Ibid., p. 79.

12. Ibid., p. 79.

13. Ibid., p. 80.

14. Ibid , p. 82.

15. Ibid , p 81.

16. Ibid , p 79.

17. Ibid , p 89.

18. Ibid , p 89.

 

29

30

19. Ibid., p. 84.
20. Ibid., p. 100.

21. Karl Marx, [pg Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts pf 1844, (New York: International Publishers,
1964); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology,
(New York: International Publishers, 1947); Karl Marx,
Capital, Vol. I, (New York: International Publisher, 1977).

 

22. Marx and Engels, "Communist Manifesto," op. cit.,
p. 349.

23. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, op. cit., p.
17. “‘_‘

24. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "On the Jewish
Question," in The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by R. Tucker,
(New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1972), p. 109.

25. Marx and Engels, "Communist Manifesto," op. cit.,
p. 350.

26. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, op. cit., p. 489.
27. Marx, Manuscripts pf 1844, op. cit., pp.133—4.

28. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Holy family,
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963), p. 224.

 

 

29. Marx and Engels, "Communist Manifesto," op. cit.,
p. 35.

30. See Heidi Hartmann, "The Unhappy Marriage of
Marxism and Feminism: Towards a more Progressive Union," in
Women and Revolution, edited by L. Sayent, (Boston: South

 

End Press, 1981).

31. Marx and Engels, German Ideology, op. cit., pp.
21-2.

32. Ipigy

33. gpggy, p. 9.

34. gpggg, p. 20.

35. Engels, Tpg Originsy 0p. cit., p. 79.
36. gpigy, p. 79.

37. gpggy, p. 89.

38. Ibid., p. 82.

31

39. Ibid., p. 10.

40. See Lydia Sargent, Women and Revolution, (Boston:
South End Press, 1981).

 

CHAPTER II

THE CONTEMPORARY MARXISTS

Contemporary Marxist analysis of the woman question has
taken three main forms. First, contemporary Marxists have
incorporated women into an analysis of everyday life in
capitalism. From this perspective men and women are both
viewed as workers and all aspects of women's lives are seen
to reproduce the capitalist system.1 Second, Marxist-
Feminists have emphasized the importance of searching for
the material base of male domination and have attempted to
create a broad theoretical framework which locates sexual
inequality directly within the social relations of specific
historical social structures.2 Third, Marxists have focused
on housework and its relation to capital, some arguing that
housework produces surplus value and that houseworkers work
directly for capitalists.3

Perhaps the most popular work exemplifying the first
Marxist approach is the series of articles by Eli Zaretsky

4
in Socialist Revolution. Recognizing that traditionally

 

Marxist analysis has subsumed the issues of sexism and the
sexual division of labor under the specific category of
class and the general analysis of capitalism, Zaretsky

argues that sexism is not a new phenomenon produced by

32

 

33

capitalism but that the particular form which sexism now
takes has been shaped by capitalism. Zaretsky's analysis
focuses on the differential experiences of men and women
under capitalism by emphasizing that capitalism has not
incorporated women into the labor force on equal terms with
men. In fact, Zaretsky who sees a clear separation between
the home, family, and personal life, on the one hand and the
workplace, on the other, argues that this has been created
by capital.

According to Zaretsky, it is this separation between
housework and wage work that has made sexism so strong and
destructive under capitalism by excluding women from wage
work and thereby increasing the level of their oppression.
Indeed, Zaretsky argues that under capitalism men are
oppressed by having to do wage work, while women are
oppressed by not being allowed to do wage work. Zaretsky
does not define the term oppression explicitly but seems to
use it to denote being dominated and subordinated. He sees
capitalism as directly and primarily causing the exclusion
of women from the labor force, since this system not only
creates wage work outside the home but also requires the
confinement of women in the home for the purpose of
reproducing the labor force and providing psychological
nurturing for the workers. Indeed, one could disagree with
Zaretsky's starting point by mentioning that women have
participated in wage work throughout the history of

capitalism and that their labor force participation rates

 

 

34

have increased dramatically since 1890's. It is based on
the dichotomy of housework and wage work that Zaretsky
argues his main point, however, that women work for capital
rather than for men per se. More specifically, the
privatization of housework which has resulted from the
separation of the home from the work place has created the
appearance that women work for men privately in the home.
This appearance, however, obscures the essence or the
reality that women work for capital. Zaretsky sees the
difference between the appearance (that women work for men)
and the reality (that women work for capital) as having
caused a misdirection of the energies of the women's
movement. He argues that women should recognize that they

too are part of the working class even though they work at

home.

For Zaretsky, "the housewife emerged, alongside the
proletariat [as] the two characteristic laborers of
developed capitalist society."5 What is needed, therefore,

is a complete reconceptualization of "production". According
to Zaretsky, we need a notion of production which includes
women's housework if we are to establish a socialist society
in which the destructive separation between housework and
wage work is overcome. On the more practical level, Zaretsky
proposes that men and women struggle both together and
_separately to reunite these divided and alienated spheres of
their lives. He sees this as the only route to a humane

socialism capable of meeting the private and public needs of

35

its people. Thus, for Zaretsky, recognizing capitalism as
the root of the problem of both men and women is essential,
since this recognition will entice them to fight capital and
not each other. Since capitalism is the cause of the
separation between our private and public lives, the end of
capitalism will end that separation, reunite our lives, and
end the oppression of both men and women.

Zaretsky accepts the arguments that sexism predates
capitalism and that housework is crucial to the reproduction
of capital. Moreover, he not only does not belittle
housework but considers it hard work. His own analysis rests
strongly on his notion of separation and the concept of
division between wage work and housework as the crux of the
problem, a division that he ultimately attributes to
capitalism. It is through his emphasis on the separate but
equally important spheres of the home and the market,
however, that Zaretsky ultimately denies the existence of
inequality between men and women. More specifically, in his
analysis of the family, the labor market, the economy, and
the society he simply explains the sexual division of labor
in capitalism, while in the final analysis failing to tell
us why this division places men in a superior, and women in
a subordinate position. In other words, even if we accept
his theoretical position that capitalism is responsible for
the creation of the private sphere as separate and divided
from the public sphere, we are still left with the question

of how it happened that women work in the private sphere and

36

6
men in the public sphere.

Zaretsky sees the creation of the private sphere of the
household as the capitalist system's contribution to women's
oppression, just as Engels saw private property as the cause
of this oppression. Zaretsky's humane socialism, like
Engels', will ultimately reunite the family in the image of
their romanticized version of the pre-industrial family in
which men, women, and children work together. While Zaretsky
sees women's work as only appearing to benefit men when ’in
reality it is for capital, it has also been argued that
women's work in the family really is for men -- though it
clearly reproduces capitalism as well. Thus, the struggle
between men and women will have to continue along with the
struggle against capital.7

It is in light of these weaknesses in Zaretsky's
version of contemporary Marxist analysis of women's
situation that Marxist-feminists have attempted to locate
the material base of male domination similar to the material
base Marx found for working class exploitation.

One of the first attempts at such an ambitious project
was by Juliet Mitchell. In her article, "Women: The Longest
Revolution," Mitchell postulates the existence of two
separate but interacting spheres of domination, the family
versus the organization of production.8 She makes an
important contribution by dividing the private sphere of the

family into three distinct structures: 1) Reproduction, 2)

Sexuality, and 3) Socialization. Women's oppression is

 

 

37

located for Mitchell in the organization of all three of
these structures as well as in production. She writes:

The lesson of these reflections is that

the liberation of women can only be

achieved if all four structures in which

they are .integrated are transformed. A

modification of any one of them can be

offset by a reinforcement of another, so

that mere permutation of the form of

exploitation is achieved.9
For Mitchell, the material base of women's oppression is
located within and between these three structures and
production. She rejects the reduction of the women's problem
to their inability to work, which stresses women's simple
subordination to the institution of private property and
class exploitation.

The importance of Mitchell's analysis is in her focus
and emphasis on the powerlessness that women experience
because they are reproductive beings, sexual beings, working
individuals, and socializers of children - in all dimensions
of their activities. Thus, power is seen by Mitchell as a
complex reality.10

However, upon closer examination, we can see that
Mitchell reverts back to the analysis of her socialist
predecessors. One is still left with the need to clarify the
relationship of the family and the political economy of
capitalist society. The question arises: if the structures
Mitchell postulates are the source of women's oppression,
how do men fit in, i.e., what is the relationship of men and

women in creating and maintaining these structures? Mitchell

still maintains a form of women/domestic sphere and

38

men/public sphere dichotomy. The material connection of the
four structures and relations are not presented. For
Mitchell, it is production in the last instance which is
important. The material base of the family ultimately turns
out to be ideological.

To put the matter schematically . . . we

are . . . dealing with two autonomous

areas: the economic mode of capitalism and

the ideological mode of patriarchy.11

Mitchell reaches this position because for her not all
of women's work counts as production. Only market work is
identified as production while the other spheres, which she
loosely aggregates as the family, are identified as
ideological. Thus, patriarchy which largely organizes
reproduction, sexuality, and child-rearing, has no material
base for Mitchell. Indeed, she clearly presents patriarchy
as the fundamental ideological structure, just as capital is
the fundamental economic structure. Thus, the structure of
women's oppression becomes a reflection of cultural values
and mores, rather than concrete social relations with
inherent contradictions and tensions.

Credit must be given to Mitchell, however, for giving
voice and direction to later Marxist-feminists by beginning
the demystification of the family. Her dichotomy of the
double spheres -- domestic versus public -- was seized upon
and subsequently elaborated in many forms. Two of these
further developments, were by Gayle Rubin12 and .Heidi

13
Hartmann and will be examined here. Both of these writers

 

 

 

39

present production as one sphere of domination; on the other
side, Rubin postulates a "sex-gender system," and Hartmann,
patriarchy. The choice of these two terms is a reflection of

what elements each theorist intends to highlight. Rubin's

definition of the sex-gender system" - —the set of

arrangements by which a society transforms biological
14

sexuality into products of human activity," - - focuses

upon the organization of sexuality. She goes on to specify
that ". . . at the most general level,. the social
organization of sex rests upon gender, obligatory
heterosexuality, and the constraint of female sexuality."15

In contrast, patriarchy for Hartmann is " . . . a set
of social relations between men, . . . which hierarchically
establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men
that enable them to dominate women."16 She argues that this
focus captures the notion of hierarchy and male domination,
which she considers central to the present system, since
"Hierarchies work at least in part because they create
vested interests in the status quo."17

As a result of these different starting points, each
writer offers a different understanding of the material base
of sexual inequality. For Rubin, emphasis is placed on
sexual coercion; through the exchange of women by men, men
ensure that the basic unit of society is one man and one
woman with mutual interdependence. The material base for

Hartmann, on the other hand, revolves around male

hierarchies which enable men to both control women's labor

 

 

40

and to claim the valued characteristic of the dominant
ideology. However, both of these attempts fall short in
their endeavor to connect the dual spheres of production and
male domination.

Although Hartmann begins her analysis with a thorough
critique of past attempts by Marxists and Marxist-feminists,
which basically centers around the inadequacies of Marxist
categories to explain sexual inequality, and emphasizes the
need to create new conceptualizations, her analysis comes
full circle. Her analysis concludes with the traditional
Marxist starting point of labor. There is no way within this
framework to understand either how these male hierarchies
came about, since it has been shown male control over female
labor varies tremendously from culture to culture,18 or why
such hierarchies generate male aggression and violence
against women.

More importantly, if, as Hartmann states, patriarchal
social relations in contemporary capitalism are not confined
to the family but also exist in the capitalist workshop and
other institutions outside the family, it is hard to see by
what principle these patriarchal relations can be separated
from the social relations of capitalism. Hartmann concedes
that "the same features, such as division of labor, often
reinforce both patriarchy and capitalism, and in a thorough
patriarchal capitalist society it is hard to isolate the

19

mechanisms of patriarchy." Yet she insists that patriarchy

must be separate. It seems reasonable, however, to hold that

41

if patriarchy and capitalism are manifest in identical
social and economic structures, they belong to one and not
two spheres.

More generally, this is the ultimate objection to any
dual systems theory.20 However formulated, the dual systems
theory allows traditional Marxism to maintain its theories
of production relations and historical change and its
analysis of the structure of capitalism in a basically
unchanged form. That theory, _as pointed out by Hartmann
herself, works with gender-blind categories. The dual system
theory thus accepts this gender-blind analysis of the
relations of production, wishing only to add to it a
separate conception of the relations of gender hierarchy.
Thus, not unlike traditional Marxism, the dual systems
theory tends to see the question of women's oppression as
merely an addition to the main question of Marxism.

In the case of Rubin's analysis, it should be pointed
out that her focus on sexual coercion as the material base
of male domination offers a valuable starting point for
understanding male violence and aggression against women.
Rubin makes the important point that while we are born
female and male, biological sexes, we are created woman and
man, socially recognized genders. However, in Rubin's
presentation there is no discussion of the relation or
connection to production and the capitalist system of this
social system of sexual coercion. In a sense, Rubin focuses

on one side of the duality, Marx on the other, and Hartmann

 

42

on the point of their intersection.

The problem with these frameworks of analysis, however,
is representative of a recurring dilemma that emerges in the
works of Marxist—feminists, namely, how to find and develop
an analysis of two separate motive forces and their points
of intersection. Joan Kelly in her article, "The Double
Vision of Feminist Theory," discusses this problem in a
historical context.21 She suggests that the ". . . bourgeois
conception of a private and public domain" has radically
affected feminist theory.22 This, according to Kelly, has
resulted in the many attempts to create two spheres or
systems of domination. Kelly stresses that this opposition
stems from and is a reflection of the existing social order.
Feminist theories have been caught up in the reified
reflection of this false dichotomy. She argues that ".
woman's place is not a separate sphere or domain of
existence but a position within social existence
generally,"23 and that any fruitful analysis must ".
treat sexual and reproductive experience in terms of
political economy: and treat productive relations of class
in connection with sex hierarchy."24 For Kelly it is the
systemic connectedness that is important. Kelly's emphasis
on a "doubled vision" and her view that a unified theory
which "acknowledges the combined power of sexual-familial
productive relations in our lives, and the fact that these
relations serve male and socio-economic interests at the

25
same time," appear on the surface to reduce the burden of

43

constructing a model of two dynamic and interactive systems,
and squarely places at the center of the framework the
legitimacy and, in fact, the necessity of studying sexual
inequality.

But in her next step Kelly generates a different
problem. By postulating that ". . . In any of the historical
forms that patriarchal society (feudal, capitalist,
socialist, etc.) a sex-gender system and a system of
productive relations operate simultaneously,"26 we again
become entangled in the drudgery of separate spheres. Even
if patriarchy is accepted as the generic term for all of
human society (with all ensuing problems of universality,
trans-historicism, and inevitability that this entails),27 a
framework must still be constructed for understanding the
interaction of the patriarchy or sex-gender system with the
system of production.

At the same time, then, when feminists who were also
Marxists began to criticize the failure of Marxist theory in
coming to terms with the specificity of women's situation,
attempts to construct theoretical work in this area tended
to draw on existing concepts and to apply them uncritically
to the situation of women. More specifically, there is
evident a tendency to appropriate existing Marxist theory,
first by pointing to its weaknesses where women were
concerned, and second by attempting to insert the specific

question of women into existing analysis and hence to add to

rather than transform Marxist theory. This problem together

44

with that of the apparently transhistorical character of
women's oppression have strongly problematized the
relationship between such oppression and the mode of
production. Any attempt to deal with this fundamental issue
has not only necessitated a strong‘reconsideration of the
relationship between patriarchy (however formulated) and the
economy; it has also made clear that an analysis of the
subordination of women cannot be provided by Marxists unless
Marxism itself is transformed.

This leads to the third form that contemporary Marxist
analysis of the woman question has taken. More specifically,
this group of Marxist economists has focused specifically on
housework, or what has been termed in the literature
"domestic labor", and has done so through exploring the
economic consequences of patriarchy for production and
distribution within the family.

The analysis of women's domestic labor has initiated a
heated debate.- Maria Dalla Costa28 has claimed that women's
domestic labor, since unpaid, has lowered the value of labor
power and thereby has served the capitalists by lowering
real wages. Christine Delphy, a radical feminist, has
asserted, however, that women's unpaid domestic labor not
only benefits the class of capitalists but it directly
benefits individual men.29 In order to tackle the issue of
who actually benefits from women's unpaid house work, the

debate has centered around the value of labor power and

production of surplus value. Some analysts have suggested

45

that the separate sphere of production in which domestic

labor operates contributes to the production of surplus
30
value while not directly producing value. Others have

argued that since labor power is a commodity we can analyze
31
its production and reproduction in value terms. However,

the latter deny that the reproduction of labor power
involves in any way the production of surplus value. There
are still other analyses that fall squarely in the realm of
traditional Marxist theory by emphasizing that domestic

labor not being subject to the law of value is analytically
32
incompatible with wage labor.

We will concentrate on the work of Nancy Folbre as
representative of the third category of contemporary Marxist
analysis on women, characterized by its concentration on
domestic labor as the locus of women's oppression and its
attempt to transform Marxist theory itself in order to make

it compatible with a coherent analysis of the sexual
33
division of labor in capitalist society. With respect to

the general debate over domestic labor and the value of
labor power briefly summarized above, Folbre writes:

Some issues have been clarified along the
way. Others have been obscured. The
categories of age and gender have been
subsumed into the undifferentiated term
"domestic labor," and the domestic
laborer/wage worker dichotomy has
deflected attention from differences
between the economic position of husbands
and wives, parents and children,
differences that often exist independently
of the wage-worker status of one or more
family member. The distinction between
types of domestic labor has been glossed
over. Intrahousehold exchange between

46

parents and children clearly have
different implications than do exchanges
between husbands and wives, but these have
not been explored in any detail.34

According to Folbre this debate has failed to generate
any attention to "the social organization of human

35
reproduction." Consequently, she claims that, the
participants have reinforced the general tendency in Marxism
of analyzing the issue of the reproduction of labor power
strictly in terms of effects on the relationship between
workers and capitalists.

Folbre explains that, in Marxian theory, exploitation
is explicitly described as the expropriation of surplus
value. Surplus value, as applied by Marxists to the
capitalist mode of production, is equivalent to the
difference between the value of the workers' labor power and
the value which they transfer to the product of their labor.
The value of labor power is by assumption set equal to the
labor embodied in the wage bundle which contains the goods
the worker consumes in order to reproduce his capacity to
work.

In volume I of Capital, Marx briefly
mentioned two other factors which might
enter into the determination of the value
of labor power, "the cost of developing
that power" and the "difference between
the labor power of men and women, children
and adults". "Both these factors," he
wrote, "are excluded in the following
investigation." With this brief caveat, he
dismissed the possibility that household
labor might have a significant or even
noticeable effect on the reproduction of

labor power.36

Folbre goes on to argue that in fact wage workers not

47

only do not consume all their wage bundle, but they share it
with the other members of the household. Indeed, other
family members, especially women, provide goods and services
for the family through their unpaid domestic labor.
. If the portion of wage goods
transferred to the family were exactly
equivalent in value to the portion of
family-produced goods and services, the
wage bundle would in fact be an accurate
reflection of the actual amount of
socially-necessary labor time devoted to
the reproduction of labor power. But there
is absolutely no reason to assume that the
exchange between wage workers and family
is equivalent in value terms. This
assumption merely circumvents a serious
problem. If the family labor can not be
analyzed in value terms, the condition of
equivalent exchange can not even be
defined much less satisfied.37
Folbre seems to think that this implicit assumption in
Marxism is the source of much of the confusion in the
contemporary debate over the value of labor power and its
relationship to domestic labor.

Folbre argues that though Marxists tend to deny that
families pursue any economic goals (i.e., follow an
objective function), there is in fact, an implicit objective
function embedded in the Marxian notion of the working
class, namely, that working class families are primarily

38
concerned with survival and subsistence. She goes on to
assert that the notion that household behavior is dictated
purely by the survival motive only works if wages are set at

a subsistence level. She sees this as inconsistent with

Marx's insistence that the value of labor power has a "moral

48

and historical" element. "It seems logical, then, that a
'moral and historical' element may also govern the amount of
household labor that is devoted to the reproduction of labor
power . . . The full cost of the reproduction of labor
power, specific to a given cultural and class context, may
be affected by traditions and social norms."39

Folbre thus intends to effect a fundamental theoretical
reorientation of Marxism by insisting that households pursue
some specific objective-function that both varies across
classes and changes over time. She claims that this
theoretical reorientation makes it possible, first, to
analyze transfers of goods and labor time between family
members and, second, to redefine the value of labor power
by suggesting that both surplus and value may be generated
within the household.

Folbre builds an economic model based on the assumption
that family members pool the product of their labor to
reproduce the family and its members. Her intention is to
show that the claim that family members cooperate when
making decisions regarding production does not imply that
the product of family labor is distributed equally. Indeed,
according to Folbre, this claim provides "a framework for
asking whether they are distributed equally."4O

Having limited her model to the case where the family
has at most one wage earner who is exploited as a wage

worker, her model accommodates the role of the family non-

wage laborer and lends itself to three distinct

49

possibilities. First, the exchange of labor products is on
an equal basis among family members; thus the wage worker
alone is exploited. Second, the wage worker recoups the loss
of surplus value to the capitalist through unequal exchange
within the family, in which case only the non-wage worker is
exploited. And finally, the burden of exploitation is shared
between wage and non-wage workers in the family. This is the
case in which the total number of hours worked by family
members is greater than the total hours embodied in their
total consumption bundle. Therefore, in both the second and
third case exploitation comes home in the sense that the
woman domestic worker is exploited.

Which of these possibilities, or

combination of possibilities, actually

holds in reality cannot be determined

unless hours worked in household labor are

commensurable with wage work in terms of

abstract labor. I have argued that this

commensurability is made possible by the

socially-necessary character of household

production. Despite the fact that

household workers do not produce for the

market they choose the most efficient

means to perform their task. Their work

may differ in skill and intensity, their

fixed capital may differ in cost and

depreciation, and they may engage in joint

production, but none of these factors

significantly distinguishes their work

from that of wage workers.41

Folbre next elaborates her notion of exploitation. She

points out that a simple transfer of surplus value is not
itself necessarily an expropriation of surplus value, and
therefore, unequal exchange does not in and of itself imply

exploitation. At the same time, one of the most important

lessons of Marxism, according to Folbre, is that

50

exploitation is often disguised by appearing to be equal

exchange. Thus, the question of exploitation can be resolved

only by reference to the political dimension of Marxian

distribution theory and by very close scrutiny of the notion
42

of free choice.

More specifically, the worker who receives a wage which
is less than the value of the product of his labor may
voluntarily exchange his labor for this wage and even
benefit from this exchange, but if he has no independent
access to the means of production the worker's choice to
sell his product is essentially predetermined. Folbre
criticizes the Marxists for not being fully aware of the
differences in access to the means of production due to age
and sex (and here it should be mentioned that she herself
misses race).

. . . Yet a large body of scholarship
describes peasant and petty commodity
modes of production, both outside and
within capitalist formations, in which
legal and practical control over the
family's land and capital resides in the
hands of older males. Even where a part of
the labor force has been proletarianized,
control over home and hearth often rests
with men. Furthermore, social sanctions
and laws which prohibit contraception and
abortion sometimes give men substantial
control over women's own biological means
of production.43

Folbre argues that women in fact rarely face an either-
or situation. Since they often lack access to an independent

means of survival, they voluntarily marry and thus continue

to cooperate within a patriarchal family, despite its

51

inequalities. Therefore, in a society in which men qua men
have relatively more access to the means of production;
participate in forming and enforcing laws, institutions, and
social norms and practices that weaken women's economic
independence; enjoy a substantially greater bargaining
power; and have lower rates of exploitation, Folbre believes
that "one can make a strong case that they are indeed,
exploiters."44

According to Folbre, the possibility of this type of
exploitation has serious implications not only for the
patriarchal family structure, but also for any understanding
of capitalism. One important implication is that it is now
possible for one to argue that women indeed compensate the
male wage earner for his exploitation in the market.
Moreover, exploitation of women by men suggests "that class
lines between families are likely to be cross-cut and
weakened by non-class forms of conflict."45 While admitting
that her analysis requires further elaboration, Folbre
concludes that, in order to comprehend women's
subordination, Marxists have to be more concerned with the
economics of the family.

Folbre's conception of the family as a locus of
conflict and struggle rather than an active agent with
unified interests, plus her identification of the family as
a location where production and distribution take place

rather than a unit shaped by affect and kinship, goes a long

way in identifying and exploring the material aspects of

52

gender relations within family units in particular and
capitalist society in general. She also is at least
partially successful in transforming Marxist theory and
making it consistent with a more adequate analysis of the
sexual division of labor.

Her work proceeds, however, within certain limits. She
does not, for instance, address in her work the many real
differences in the ways people of different periods,
regions, or ethnic groups structure and experience family
life. She focuses mainly on the capitalist mode of
production. Second, she concentrates almost exclusively on
domestic labor and women's oppression in the working class.
Third, she restricts her analysis to the economic level. All
these limit the scope of Folbre's analysis.

More specifically, her emphasis on domestic labor and
the economics of the family sheds little light on the
problem of whether housework is analytically the ‘same in
different classes within capitalism and even less on the
theoretical status of domestic labor in noncapitalist
societies. Also, by essentially identifying domestic labor
with housework and child-care, and by leaving the status of
child-bearing undefined, Folbre does not explain why
domestic labor falls generally to women: Moreover, since
women's oppression is not specific to capitalist societies,
one is left to wonder how to reconcile its particular
contemporary character with the fact that women have been

subordinated for thousands of years. Similarly, one is left

53

wondering whether women are or will be liberated in
socialist societies. Finally, the relationship between the
material processes of domestic labor and the range of
phenomena which make up women's oppression, especially those
of an ideological and psychological nature, is a key issue

with which she does not consider.

FOOTNOTES

1. Eli Zaretsky, "Capitalism, the Family and Personal
Life," Socialist Revolution, No. 13-14, (1973).

2. See for example Juliet Mitchell. "Women: The
Longest Revolution." New Left Review, No. 14. (1966).

3. Jean Gardiner, "Women's Domestic Labour," New
Left Review, No. 89, (1975).

4. Zaretsky, "Capitalism," op. cit.; Eli Zaretsky,
"Socialist Politics and the Family," Socialist Review, No.
19, (1974).

5. Zaretsky, "Capitalism," op. cit., p. 114.

6. Hartmann, op. cit.

7. Ibid.

8. Mitchell, "Longest Revolution", op. cit., pp. 11—
37.

9. Ibid., p. 20.

10. Ibid., pp. 11-37.

11. Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1974), p. 412.

12. Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the
'Political Economy' of Sex," in Towards pp Anthropolpgy 9;
Women, edited by R. Reiter, (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1975).

13. Hartmann, op. cit.

14. Rubin, op. cit., p. 182.

15. Ibid., p. 182.

16. Hartmann, op. cit., p. 13.

17. Ibid., p. 15.

54

55

 

18. Rayna R. Reiter, Towards pp Anthropology pf
Women, (New York: Monthly Reviw Press, 1975).

19. Iris Young, "Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A
Critique of the Dual Systems Theory," in Women and

Revolution, edited by L. Sargent, (Boston: South End Press,
1981).

20. Ibid.

 

21. Joan Kelly, "The Doubled Vision of Feminist
Theory," Feminist Studies, Vol. 5, No. 7, (1979).

 

22. Ibid., 220.

24. Ibid.,

P

23. gpigy, p. 221.

p 221.
P

25. Ibid., 220.

 

26. Ibid., p. 224.

 

27. See Mitchell Barrett, Women's Oppression Today,
(London: Verso, 1980).

28. Mariarosa Dalla Costa, "Women and the Subversion
of the Community." The Power 9; Women and the Subversion pg
the Community, (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1972).

29. Christine Delphy, The Main Enemy, (London: Women's
Research Center, 1976).

30. John Harrison, "The Political Economy of
Housework," Bulletin 9; the Conference pp Socialist
Economists, Vol. IV, (1973).

31. Wally Seccombe, "The Housewife and her Labor under
Capitalism," New Left Review, No. 83, (1974).

32. Susan Himmelweit and Simon Mohun, "Domestic Labor
and Capital," Cambridge Journal 9; Economics, Vol. 1,
(1977).

33. Nancy Folbre, "Exploitation comes home: a critique
of Marxian Theory of family labor," Cambridge Journal 9;
Economics, No. 6, (1982).

34. Ibid., p. 319.

35. Ibid., p. 319.

36. Ibid., p. 318.

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56

CHAPTER III
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL NEOCLASSICISTS

There is a split in the neoclassical school regarding
the appropriate economic role of government. The
conservative neoclassical tradition, or the Chicago school.
defends a policy of laissez-faire. The liberal neoclassical
tradition, on the- other hand, advocates a substantial
economic role for the government. These two camps, however,
have three characteristics in common which are important
enough to classify them both as neoclassicists.

Both camps adhere to the principle of methodological
individualism, viewing socio-economic theories as -being
grounded in the attitudes and behavior of individual
economic agents. Consequently, both camps utilize the
concept of the economic man to postulate rationality, an
assumption of self-interested and maximizing behavior under
constraints. For both camps methodological key to correct
economic analysis is to distinguish positive versus
normative investigation. Both camps view the prediction of
human behavior as giving theories of economic life their
scientific character. The consequence of the emphasis on

predictiOn and the separation of normative and positive

analysis for neoclassical economists is that they can be

57

58

characterized as "methodological monists". More
specifically, "methodological monism" is defined as the view
that accepts a common methodology for both the natural and
the social sciences, as opposed to "methodological dualism"
which distinguishes between the correct methodological
principles of the natural and social sciences.1 In addition
to their adherence to the same methodological principles,
both camps defend the private property system of capitalism.
Finally, .they both defend some version of the three basic
tenets characteristic of neoclassical economic theory. The
first is the argument that a market economy harmonizes all
interests and leads to an efficient allocation of resources.
The second is the automaticity of market clearing leading to
full—employment equilibrium. The third is the belief in the
marginal productivity theory of income distribution which
equates each individual's income and the value that he or
she creates at the margin.2

This chapter investigates the Chicago School tradition.
Chapter IV will be devoted to the liberal wing. It should
be mentioned at the outset that the Chicago School has an
extensive analysis of the sexual division of labor within
the family; a similar discussion of the familial division of
labor is lacking in the liberal tradition. Thus, the
discussion of the Chicago tradition is by necessity more
extensive. The liberal tradition does have analyses of

women's labor supply and therefore the sexual division of

labor in the economy as a whole.

59
Chicago Analysis 9; Women's Labor Supply

The rising labor force participation of women,
especially married women, since the 1890's was the first
issue that attracted economists to the questions concerning
women in the economy. The orthodox theory of labor supply
held that the rational worker would allocate time to the
labor market so as to balance the benefits gained from
income and leisure. According to the standard approach, the
effect of a wage change could not be predicted a priori. The
substitution effect of a wage increase makes leisure
relatively more expensive and therefore tends to elicit more
work. However, the extra income resulting from the higher
wage“also induces additional purchases of all normal goods,
including. leisure. Thus, the income effect predicts a
decrease in the hours of week offered to the market. A
backward—bending labor supply curve would result if, over a
certain income range, the income effect outweighs the
substitution effect.

As women's increasing entry into the paid labor force
became impossible to ignore after World War II, economists
set out to explain the female labor supply. Jacob Mincer
opened the discussion in 1962 with an article in which he
pointed out that cross—section data for women and time—
series data for men were consistent with the- backward—
bending supply curve hypothesis.3 However, the continuing

secular increase in women's labor force participation meant

that the time—series data for women were inconsistent with

60

the backward-bending supply curve for women. Cross—section
studies concluded that there was an inverse relationship
between wives' labor force participation and husbands'
income. On the other hand, time-series studies showed a
positive relation between these two variables. Mincer's main
goal was to resolve the contradiction that had developed in
these two sets of data for the labor force participation
rates of married women.

Mincer, logically enough, introduced the wife's own
wage rate as a relevant variable and explicitly designated
the family as the decision—making unit. For the women the
choice between market work and leisure was expanded into a
more realistic one also involving work at home. Mincer's
resolution concentrated on the double impact of income and
prices on married women's behavior. He argued that a woman's
Choice depends not only on her husband's income but is also
influenced by her own wage rate, i.e., the price of her
labor.

According to Mincer, the opportunity cost of time spent
consuming leisure and doing housework has risen because of
the higher take-home pay of married women in the twentieth
century. Therefore, at the same time that the husbands'
income has pulled women out of the labor force and into the
home, women's higher wages have pushed them into the labor
force and out of the home. The observed increase in married
women's labor force participation Mincer concluded, implies

that the substitution effect has triumphed over the income

61

effect.

Beginning most visibly with the work of Kelvin
Lancaster in 1966, the notion that households only consume
was dramatically challenged.4 In essence, the traditional
view treats the household as a black box; market goods enter
one side and somehow utility exit the other. The activities
of household members by whom market goods are made to yield
utility are totally neglected and real work is assumed to
occur only in the market. In contrast, the new framework
acknowledges the existence and legitimacy of household
production in which time and market goods are combined to
produce household commodities that in turn are the immediate
sources of utility.

Mincer's work inspired a rapid expansion of the
boundaries of neoclassical economic analysis. Since in
neoclassical theory a problem qualifies as economic if
scarcity is involved, the discovery of time as a scarce
resource with competing uses has made analyses of nonmarket
activities involving time quite respectable.

In Gary Becker's hands the theory has become more
general.5 Time is designated as an input along with market
goods in the family's utility function. Moreover time is
necessary to produce as well as consume household goods and
both uses compete with time allocated to the labor market.
According to Becker the household would allocate the time of

all its members according to their relative efficiencies and

also has the choice to switch to less time—intensive

62

commodities such as frozen dinners. As in the 'previous
model, the effect on women's labor force participation of an
increase in the market wage cannot be predicted.

The research that followed in the 1960's was directed
toward empirical estimation of the model. Several variables
hypothesized as influencing women's labor supply were tested
which were expected to influence participation through
either the income or the substitution effect. The two

definitive works of this type were Glen Cain's Married Women

 

 

 

 

in the Labor Force6 and The Economics 9: Labor Force

Participation by William Bowen and T. Aldrich Finegan.7
Bowen and Finegan include as major factors for

increasing women's labor force participation the

development and diffusion of labor saving devices and the
increasing wages of domestic servants.8 In fact, however,
other studies have shown that domestic work in hours has not
decreased with the proliferation of the so-called labor-
saving devices.9 Also, domestic servants' wages, at relevant
rates, seem unlikely to affect the labor market decision of
the average working women unless she is considering it for
an occupation.

Economists have also invoked psychological explanations
to analyze a woman's decision to work. For example, Glen
Cain suggests that black women's high labor force
participation rates relative to white women might be due to
a fear of losing their husbands because of the greater

10
marital instability of the black community.

63

In the more recent literature on women's labor supply,
the framework of analysis is relatively unchanged. Married
women are the focus of both the theoretical and the
empirical studies.11 The wage rates of the woman and her
husband, her level of education, and the number and ages of
children are the primary determinants of labor supply of
women. The most important theoretical development has been
the extension to an explicit life-cycle model. This model
bases all time allocation, human capital investment,
fertility, and consumption decisions of the individual on a
desired level of expected permanent income. This concept was
developed by Milton Friedman in 1975.12 With respect to
labor supply decisions the life-cycle approach predicts that
individuals, or family units plan a level of life-time
commitment to the labor force but time their periods of

participation according to fluctuations in economic

conditions and corresponding fluctuations in wage rates.

Evaluation 9; Chicago School Labor Supply Literature:

Alice H. Amsden has remarked that by explaining a
woman's behavior as the result of two opposing forces, the
neoclassical model explains at the same time everything and
nothing. Since either the income or the price effect must
dominate any result is admissible and the theory is
irrefutable. As to why one effect or another might dominate
at any particular time, an historical analysis becomes

relevant. This view does not rule out the influence of price

64

and income changes, but it argues that the relation between
these changes must be explored for a more complete
picture.13

The rebuttal to this objection might be that if the
results of the orthodox analysis are useful and the
predictions correct, then economists need not concern
themselves with social variables. Therefore, the question is
whether the results are indeed convincing. One example that
suggests a negative answer, is that the behavior of black
women has persistently not conformed to the hypothesis. It
might be that an analysis which integrates theories of
class, race, and sex would lead to a more realistic
understanding of the differentials between white and
minority women than explanations such as the greater marital
instability in the black community.

Another example of the shortcomings of the Chicago
analysis in the area of women's labor supply can be seen in
a recent work by Heckman and Macurdy.14 They exclude non—
white women from their empirical work. In addition, they
confine their study to middle-age women, though it is young
women who show the most dramatic increase in labor force
participation. Finally, they restrict their sample to
families with a male head and stable family composition. It
must be questioned if this is a valid test of "female labor
supply" as the title of the article suggests.

It should be mentioned that besides the empirical

15
anomalies, some of which were mentioned above, the Chicago

65

theory of sexual division of labor in the economy, i.e.,
women's labor supply, suffers from the shortcoming of being
highly selective. Becker's analysis selectively includes
non-material commodities that he believes contribute to
utility. However, he fails to include the utility of
education for its own sake, or the utility of change and

diversity.

The Chicago Theory 9; the Family

Gary Becker's general theory of the allocation of time
among alternative uses has laid the analytical ground-work
for what Tullock and McKenzie have called the "new world of
economics",16 in which economic analyses of education,
crime, dishonesty, death, suicide, politics, and
bureaucracy, have become very common. Given the importance
of the family outside the monetary sector, there was also
born the "new home economics", the Chicago School's analyses
of marriage, divorce, fertility, and even sexual
behavior.17

The Chicago School's theory of marriage starts with two
basic assumptions. The first is the rationality assumption,
that people marry because in doing so they increase their
utility. The second assumption is that there is a marriage
market in which men and women compete in their search for

mates. The marriage market is assumed to be in equilibrium

when the men and women are each in a Pareto optimal

66

position. Each person is seen to be involved in increasing
his/her utility and finding the best mate in the market for
marriage, subject to the restrictions imposed by market
conditions. According to Becker, these two principles
explain why the institution of the family exists.

Becker finds that the gain from marriage compared to
remaining single for a man and a woman is positively related
to their income, the relative difference in their wage
rates, and the traits that affect nonmarket productivity,
such as beauty and intelligence. The gain from marriage is
also greater the more complementary the inputs of the
husband and wife in the household. The gain from marriage is
also positively related to the importance of children. From
all this Becker provides a justification for assuming that
each family acts as if it maximizes a single utility
function.

According to the "new home economics" the division of
labor within the family derives from the nature of the
marriage market equilibrium. The determinant of the division
of labor in this market, as in every other market, is the
marginal productivities of the husband and wife which in
turn are determined by their human and physical capital.

Marriage in this framework is conceptualized as "a two
person firm with either member being the 'entrepreneur' who
hires the other at . . . (a) 'salary' . . . and receives
residual 'profits'."18 Women hire men as bread winners since

men earn more than women in the market, women's market

67

earning powers having been diminished by their childrearing
activities. Men hire women as nurse-maids since women bear
children and are superior at rearing them, men's child-
rearing powers having been diminished by their market
earning activities. Thus, the division of labor within the
family is concluded to be consistent with economic
maximizing principles.

Becker's work consists essentially of extensions and
application of the concept of maximizing production under
constraints. Specifically, for the household production
function, time and goods are inputs and time and income are
constraints in the production of commodities including but
not limited to "children, prestige and esteem, health,
altruism, envy, and pleasure."19 With respect to labor
supply decisions, in accordance with earlier theories it is
the relative efficiencies of household members that
determines their allocation of time to the home or the
market or both. This approach is patterned on the theory of
comparative advantage which was developed to explain gains
from specialization and trade between countries.20 In this
context, one's comparative advantage is the ratio of his or
her productivity in the market to productivity in the home.
Productivity in the market is measured by the wage that one
can obtain. Productivity at home cannot be directly
observed. Leaving aside for the moment the question of why

these productivities vary systematically between men and

women, the discussion turns to the implication of this

68

theory.

As might be expected, the theory shows that a household
can profit from specialization when the relatively more
market-efficient members allocate time there, and household—
efficient members allocate time to the domestic sphere.21
Becker goes further to demonstrate that even if household
members have identical productivities and training an
efficient household would specialize: "Theorem 2.3: At most
one member of an efficient household would invest in ’both
market and household capital and would allocate time to both
sectors." If a certain not implausible assumption is made,
then "all members of efficient households would specialize
completely in the market or household sectors . . ."22 The
explanation for this conclusion, though presented in a
rigorous mathematical manner, is quite simple and intuitive.
The gains from specialization derive from the savings in
training costs which Chicago School economists call the
costs of human capital.

From the perspective of society as a whole, this
analysis is quite clear and sensible. If there are to be
plumbers and accountants, and if there are significant
training costs of time and money to learn those trades, then
it is certainly not reasonable to expect everyone to develop
those skills extensively. On the other hand, as an
explanation and justification for the sexual division of

labor in all societies at all times, the specialization

principle is inadequate by itself. If it is granted that

69

specialization makes sense, then the question remains as to
why the split between market and home has developed along
gender lines.

Realizing that he has to answer the question of why it
is women who bake the bread and men who make the laws,
Becker steps outside of his field to give biology its due.
He asserts that "intrinsic differences between the sexes"
are also responsible for the sexual division of labor thus
combining economic and socio-biological analysis. For
example, he finds that women care and nurture for children
because "they want their heavy biological burden in

23

reproduction to be worthwhile." Further, according to
Becker, biological differences explain not only the sexual
division of labor but also heterosexuality and child rearing
practices which support traditional roles.

If only a small fraction of girls are

biologically oriented to the market rather

than household activities, then in the

face of no initial information to the

contrary, the optimum strategy would be to

invest mainly household capital in all

girls and mainly market capital in all

boys until any deviation from the norm is

established.

In this manner investments in children

with "normal" orientation reinforce their

biology, and they become specialized to

the sexual division of labor. Investment

in "deviant" children, on the other hand

conflict with their biology, and the net

outcome for them is uncertain.24

Tullock and Mckenzie by building on Becker's theory,

elaborate on the division of labor within the family. Since

it is more costly to make decisions when more than one

70

person is involved, the husband and wife often voluntarily
agree to have different decisions made administratively by
one or the other.25

In general, marriage is viewed as an elaborate contract
between a man and a woman, with each party explicitly or
implicitly agreeing to bear certain responsibilities and
commitments and to abide by a set of rules that divide and
assign decision making to each party.26 This process is
compared to the process of the development of the
constitution and by-laws of a firm. It is also claimed that
the "central purpose of dating and engagement is to set the
provisions of the marriage contract."27 It is in fact
emphasized that without the development of a set of marriage
provisions, the future of the marriage will be uncertain and
filled with disagreements, eventually resulting in
divorce.28

The long-range and more fundamental explanation for the
division of labor, including the sexual division of labor,
in the Chicago tradition is provided by the human capital
theory.29 Since individuals enjoy freedom of choice, it
follows that what exists in the market is the result of the
choices that individuals have made. Therefore, most Chicago
theorists consider women's lower earnings to be the result
of their voluntary investment in human capital smaller than
men's. Women choose to make smaller investment in human

capital and thus have lower earnings.

Human capital theorists give two reasons for women's

71

smaller investment in human capital and their consequent
lower earnings. First, they argue that women's labor force
participation is more uneven and unstable than men's due to
the time spent bearing and rearing children. Secondly, when
they are in the labor market, women choose jobs that offer
fewer opportunities for increasing their productivity.
Mincer and Polachek, for instance, argue that since
acquiring experience and on-the-job training, and therefore
skills, is costly in terms of foregone earnings, women
usually choose jobs that do not require much skills. In
other words, women maximize their earnings over their life
cycle by avoiding jobs that requires skills and training.30

The same maximization principle leads the profit
maximizing employer to fill the jobs that require high
skills with men, since they too know that men's labor force
participation is more stable. In this process, employers may
inadvertently discriminate against women who do have a
stable labor force attachment. But because of the high cost
of obtaining accurate information about the traits of
individual workers, such stereotypical judgment on the part
of employers is rational.31

In addition to earning less than men, women on average
also experience higher rates of unemployment. The higher
tendency of women to move in and out of the labor force is
also the explanation given for the difference in the rates

of unemployment between men and women. The Chicagoans argue

that the income maximizing process of search that precedes

72

reentry into the labor force necessarily involves a period
of frictional unemployment for women. Thus, women's higher
unemployment also is considered as voluntary by the Chicago

32
School economists.

Evaluation 2; the New Home Economics:

 

One may be impressed by the beauty of such a symmetri-
cal modeling of market and nonmarket activities by Chicago
theorists or one may be struck by its absurdity. The rest of
this section, however, attempts a critical appraisal of the
Chicago doctrine not on the basis of the beauty, symme-try,
or absurdity of this theory. More specifically, the aim is
to provide what Warren J. Samuels calls a "constructive
critique": "the attempt to bring into focus the meaning of
the nature, strengths, and limits of a body of ideas. . . to
understand what is being said, what is not being said, and
the bases and limits thereof."33

A general circularity has been pointed out by the
opponents of the Chicago School in their theoretical
treatment of the division of labor within the family.34 More
specifically, in order to explain the division of labor
within the home, the female-male wage differential is taken
as given. Thus, we are told that since women earn less than
men because of their lower investment in human capital and
lower productivity, the division of labor within the

household in which the woman is the nursemaid and the man

the bread-winner is logical.

 

73

At another stage in the analysis, however, in order to
explain the female-male wage differential, the division of
labor within the home is taken as given. We are told that
this wage differential is the result of women choosing to
invest less in human capital because of their commitment to
the household. It logically follows then, that women have
lower productivity and thus lower wages. In Isabel Sawhill's
words, ". . . we have come full circle . . . and it is time
to ask whether economists have done anything more than
describe the status quo in a society where sex roles are
given — defined by culture, biology, or other factors not
specified in the economic model."35

Such theoretical circularity affects the explanation
provided by the "new home economics" for the origins of the
family. The gains from marriage are said to be greater, the
greater the difference in wage rates between the wife and
the husband. It follows logically then, that women marry
because they earn less than men. But they earn less than men
because they enter into marriages in which sex roles are
given and in which it is simply assumed that they have a
comparative advantage in doing housework rather than market
work.

Thus, it can be argued that unless sexist social
relations based on gender-differentiated values, roles, and
functions, are introduced, Chicago style economics is unable

to give an explanation for either the division of labor

within the family or the existence and origins of the family

74

itself.

Let us examine the consequence of the circularity and
the subsequent assumption of sexist social relations for the
Chicago analysis, an analysis that is methodologically based
on atomistic individualism.

Chicago's primary methodological and analytical
category is the individual, who is seen not as an integral
part of an integrated socio—economic whole, but as an
isolated, independent, atomistic unit with essentially two
characteristics. First, the individual derives utility from
the consumption of different goods produced in the market or
the home. Second, the individual is a rational, calculating
maximizer. The individual maximizes utility, however,
subject to constraints. The market variables of income and
prices are the major constraints, and thus the major
determinants of individual behavior. Since it is believed
that the essence of individual behavior can be captured by a
model that uses a limited number of universal economic
variables, namely, income and prices, it is also believed
that this model can be projected over time, across social
strata, and across cultures. Therefore, Chicago analysis is
ahistorical and asocial, and it abstracts economics from
power. The human subject of the Chicago investigation is a
timeless, classless, raceless creature, although male unless
otherwise specified.

Changes in income and prices, however, do not

necessarily give rise to structural changes. In other words,

75

quantitative changes do not give rise to qualitative
changes. Rather, income and prices are conceptualized as
changing in small imperceptible amounts. Thus, human
behavior, which is responsive primarily to anonymous
variations in income and prices, changes very slowly over
time. The techniques of the calculus, therefore, are easily
applied in research.

Behavioral influences which are social, cultural, or
ideological are lumped together as tastes and are generally
assumed to be stable. Recently it has been argued that even
differences in tastes may be subsumed under income and
prices a view which conveys the absolute centrality of
market prices and income in the Chicago approach. In the
words of two of the School's most prominent and influential
proponents, George Stigler and Gary Becker,

. one does not argue over tastes for
the same reason that one does not argue
over the Rocky Mountains - both are there,
and will be there next year, too, and are
the same to all men.

On the traditional view, an
explanation of economic phenomena that
reaches a difference in tastes between
peoples or times is the terminus of the
argument: the problem is abandoned at this
point to whoever studies and explains
tastes (psychologists? anthropologists?
phrenologists? sociologists). In our'
preferred interpretation, one never
reaches this impasse: the economist
continues to search for differences in
prices or incomes to explain any
differences or changes in behavior.36

Thus, individuals are free atoms, free from any influences

other than the market variables of income and prices. The

 

 

76

society itself is simply the sum of these atomistic
individuals, with voluntary market transactions being the
only social interaction between them. In effect, the market
is the society.

The independence of individuals from any social forces
that might influence them and thereby, erode their freedom
of choice, is of fundamental importance for neoclassical
theory in general and Chicago School analysis, including the
"new home economics" in particular. Voluntary decisions have
significance in and of themselves if and only if they have
not been influenced by social forces outside the market,
forces over and above the individual's sphere of influence.

In summary, with atomistic individualism as the
important feature of the methodology of the Chicago School,
these theorists reduce everything to the sphere of the
market and thereby to exchange relations. They abstract from
any other social relation that destroys the unanimity that
exists in the market. The consistency of .their whole
approach depends on this. By smuggling in unequal and thus
sexist social relations through their circular explanation
of the sexual division of labor, however, the Chicago
theorists of the family do exactly what their methodology
prohibits them from doing. They effectively assume sexist
social relations involving power and predetermined results
at the outset and then build their theory on this
assumption. They thereby implicitly reject atomistic

individualism and the notion that individuals are free from

 

77

forces that influence their actions and choices. Moreover,
the assumption of sexual inequality which drives their model
also points to the ideological and thus normative nature of
their theory. The circularity in the Chicago argument and
the consequent assumption of sexist social relations,
implies that in a world in which men and women have unequal
wealth and power, their abilities to exercise freedom of
choice differ. .

The ideological nature of the Chicago approach to the
family and the sexual division of labor becomes apparent
when one looks at human capital theory critically. The human
capital metaphor reduces all economically relevant skills to
a single measure. But economically relevant skills are not
unidimensional and cannot simply be aggregated across
individuals into a single formal measure of which some
individuals have more or less. Moreover, families, schools,
and training institutions teach different things to
different individuals, and differing learning contexts are
closely associated with the racial, sexual, and class
characteristics of the student body.37

The justification by human capital theorists for using
the metaphor of human capital is that skills like other
assets offer a claim on future income. While most Chicago
theorists argue that normative, ethical, and ideological
positions are completely foreign to their science of
economics, other theorists claim that this definition and

characterization of capital —- i.e., claim on future income

78

--stems directly from the normative and ideological position

38
of the Chicago theorists. In fact, for classical
economists, the concept of capital encompassed two distinct
but necessary notions. One was the claim on future income

and the other was the ownership and control of the means of
production. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argue that
education and skill cannot be called capital in the
classical sense, since except for rare exceptions, educated
workers do not control, much less own, the means of
production.

The problem of measuring and identifying capital not-
withstanding, the ideological impact of the human capital
metaphor becomes even more clear when it is realized that
with this metaphor labor disappears as a fundamental
category in economic analysis. In fact, Bowles and Gintis
emphasize that human capital theory is the ultimate step in
the elimination of classes as central economic concepts,
with every worker now having become a capitalist.39

The ahistorical, highly general and highly abstract
framework of the Chicago 'new home economics' has been
purchased at the high price of obliterating most of the
trees from the forest. Indeed, the black box of the family
and household production through which the sexual division
of labor emerges is ultimately retained. In Chicago theory,
production in general and household production in particular
is a kind of alchemy. The entrepreneur and the household

have a complex mathematical recipe, called a production

79

f11r1ction. Many of the variables found in the sociological
ar1<i anthropological, etc. literature are included in the
ec:c:nomist's household production function in a formal sense.
Trlea alchemy of the production function simply transfers the
irllputs into outputs. Just as the neoclassical production
tkleaory never mentions bosses and workers, strikes, lockouts,
Slpteed-ups, etc., the Chicago approach gives very little

attention to the nature of conflict or the use of power

Within the family.

 

FOOTNOTES

1. Mark Blaug, The Methodology pf Economics,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

2. E. K. Hunt, History pf Economic Thought, (Belmont:
Wadsworth, 1979).

3. Jacob Mincer, "Labor Force Participation of
Married Women," in The Economics pf Women and Work, edited
by A. Amsden, (New York: St. Martin Press, 1962).

 

4. Kelvin Lancaster, "A New Approach to Consumer
Theory," Journal pf Political Economy, Vol. 74, No. 1
(1966).

5. Gary Becker, "A Theory of Allocation of Time," The

Economic Journal, Vol. 80, No. 200 (1965).

6. Glen Cain, Married Women 1p the Labor‘ Force,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

7. William Bowen and T. Aldrich Finegan, The
Economics 9; Labor Force Participation, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969).

 

8. T. Aldrich Finegan, "Participation of Married
Women in the Labor Force," in Sex Discrimination and the
Division pf Labor, edited by C. Lloyd, (New York: Columbia
University, 1975).

9. For this alternative View of the role of labor
saving devises see Julie Matthaei, Ap Economic History pf

Women 1p America, (New York: Schocken Books, 1982).
10. Cain, op. cit.

11. The single woman's condition is assumed to be
temporary. Presumably, she uses the same criteria for
allocating her time, only minus the potentially more market-
efficient husband.

12. Milton Friedman, A Theory 9; the Consumption

Function, (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research,
1957).

80

 

 

81

13. Alice Amsden, The Economics pf Women and Work,
(New York: St. Martin Press, 1980).

 

14. James Heckman and Thomas Macurdy, "A Life Cycle
Model of Female Labor Supply," Review pf Economic Studies,
(1980).

15. For a look at some of the critiques see Mark Lutz
and Kenneth Lux, The Challengg pf Humanistic Economics,
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Martin Hollis
and Edward Nell, Rational Economic Mpg, (London: Cambridge
University Press. 1975).

 

16. Richard Mckenzie and Gordon Tullock, edition The
New World pf Economics, (Homewood: Richard D. Irwin Inc.,
1981).

17. Ibid.

 

18. Gary Becker, "A Theory of Marriage," in Economics
pf the Family, edited by T. W. Schultz, (Chicago: University.
of Chicago Press, 1974).

19. Backer, A Treatise, op. cit., p. 8.

20. Daniel Fusfeld, Economics: Principles pf Political
Economy, (Glenview: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1982).

21. Becker, A Treatise, pp; gigy, p. 118.
22. Apigy, p. 19.

23. m, p. 21.

24. gpigg, p. 24.

25. McKenzie and Tullock, pp; gipy, p. 76.
26. Apigy, p. 73.

27. gig, p. 74.

28. gpigy, p. 75.

29. Gary Becker, Human Capital, (New York: National
Bureau of Economic Research, 1964).

30. Jacob Mincer and Solomon Polachek, "Family
Investment in Human Capital: Earnings of Women," Journal pf
PoliticaA Economy, Vol. 82, No. 2, (1974).

31. Edmond S. Phelps, "Statistical Theory of Racism
and Sexism," American Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 4
(1972).

82

32. Mincer and Polachek, op. cit.

 

33. Warren Samuels, "The Chicago School of Political
Economy: A Constructive Critique," in The Chicagp School 2:
Political Economy, edited by W. Samuels, (East Lansing:

 

Division of Research, Michigan State University, 1976).

34. Amsden, op. cit.

35. Isabel Sawhill, "Economic Perspectives on the
Family," Journal 9: the American Academy pf Arts and
Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 2, (1977), p. 120.

36. George Stiger and Gary Becker, "De Gustibus Non
Est Disputandum," American Economic Review,‘ Vol. 67, No. 2,
(1977), p. 80.

37. Sammuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, ,"The Problem
with Human Capital Theory," American Economic Review,
Papers and Proceeding, Vol. 65, (May 1975), pp. 74-82.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

CHAPTER IV

THE LIBERAL NEOCLASSICISTS

When studying the liberal neoclassicists one cannot
help but recognize that their literature has a relatively
non-dogmatic and flexible style and that they would prefer
to have capitalism be a more humane socio-economic system
than it is. These liberal economists are frequently very
open in granting some validity to the criticisms and
objections to neoclassical theory. In fact, they rarely
hesitate to admit many of the injustices and inequalities of
the capitalist system. This is in stark contrast to the
conservative tradition with its dogmatic and rigid style and
its denial of reality where it does not fit theory.

Most importantly, the liberal neoclassicists, unlike
their conservative counterparts, strongly advocate
government intervention in the economy and have faith in
gradual reform in the context of capitalist institutions.
Unlike the conservative Chicago economists whose insistence
on laissez—faire seems not to permit them either to accept
many of the realities of capitalism or to acknowledge many
of the critiques of neoclassical economic theory, the
liberal neoclassicists do indeed understand the extensions

of the role and power of the government in contemporary

83

 

84

capitalist economies. The main difference between these two
camps within the general neoclassical paradigm is that the
conservatives view the model of a perfectly competitive
economy as a fairly close representation of the capitalist
economy. When faced with a situation in which the
institutions of the capitalist system, rather than
functioning harmoniously and in a universally beneficial
manner, as their theory would predict, in fact show signs of
instability and conflict, the Chicagoan blames the
government. Most liberal economists, however, view perfect
competition as an ideal that has never been and likely will
never be, an ideal that is only very roughly representative
of the capitalist economy.1

Since the liberal neoclassicists do not believe that
capitalism would function harmoniously if the government
confines its role to the protection of private property and
enforcement of contracts, they reject the conservatives'
emphasis on blaming the government for every ill of the
economic system. Indeed, for the liberal it is only through
the intervention of the government in the economy that the
actual economic situation can be made to more closely
approximate the theoretical results of perfect competition.
The liberal sees in the government a neutral and generally
benevolent political power that should be relied on to
intervene and bring about economic harmony.2

Liberal economists see a number of flaws in the model

of perfect competition which makes it inadequate in and of

 

85

itself. First, they argue that laissez-faire, unrestrained
competitive capitalism is unstable, which they consider to
be wasteful. In their view, government can effectively
mitigate this instability and perhaps bring about a
considerable degree of stability to the capitalist system.
Secondly, the liberals recognize the existence of large and
economically powerful corporations which, if left
unrestrained, will not behave in a manner consistent with
the depictions of the competitive model. Finally, liberal
neoclassical economists argue that it is the government that
can equalize the social and private costs that are liable to
diverge as a result of externalities. The government they
argue can cure the problem of externalities with a system of

3
taxes and government subsidies.

Liberal Neoclassical Analysis g; Labor Supply

From the brief comparison of the conservative and
liberal neoclassicists given above, it is clear that it is
possible to use the general neoclassical method and frame-
work to arrive at conclusions that are considerably
different from the conclusions reached by the Chicago
school.

Indeed, with regard to women's labor supply literature,
there are those inside the neoclassical camp who reject
Becker's assumption that biological differences ultimately
determine labor supply differences. For example, Cynthia

Lloyd and Beth Niemi point to certain assumptions made by

 

 

 

86
4

the Chicagoans that limit their analysis. For instance,
women are considered to be secondary earners and their
husbands are the "heads". Consequently, most economists
assume the husband's income and the number and ages of
children affect the wife's labor force participation.
However, they neglect to examine the impact of these
"family" variables on the husband's participation. Lloyd and’
Niemi advocate symmetrical analyses of participation on the
grounds that "men and women are basically people with the
same innate abilities and patterns of responses to
incentives, whose different opportunities have led them to
different labor market outcomes."5

Therefore, Lloyd and Niemi advocate treating men and
women symmetrically, and conclude that varying labor supply
behavior can be explained by demand factors that affect
women and men differently. They point out that women's lower
and more discontinuous labor force participation and lower
rate of human capital accumulation can be seen as women's
rational response to discrimination. Discrimination is
manifest by women's relative restriction in occupational
choice, higher unemployment, and lower earnings in
comparison with men. Thus, the explanation for women's
secondary economic status is a self-perpetuating cycle of

6
discrimination and differential labor supply behavior.

87
Theories pi Discrimination

Studies of the labor market have shown that wage
differences between whites and non-whites and between men
and women persist even after corrections are made for
differences in productivity, occupation and hours of work.7
Labor economists from both the conservative and liberal
persuasions have tried, then, to explain the mechanism by
which these wage gaps are perpetuated in the economy. These
attempts have led to several different theories of wage
discrimination.

The conservative theoreticians subscribe to a
competitive theory of wage discrimination that sees
discrimination as a phenomenon that interferes with the free
nature of trade between different segments of the
population: whites and blacks, men and women.8 This theory
in effect treats each one of these categories of population
as societies that are involved in trade. Free trade among
these societies would involve no discrimination and would
lead to equalized marginal products of all factors in the
societies involved. Analogous to theories of international
trade, each society would export the factors in which it has
a comparative advantage, and would import the factor of
which it is relatively disadvantaged.

The existence of discrimination, however, would imply
that whites, for instance, have a taste for not associating

with blacks and are willing to pay a premium in order to

fulfill this taste. This premium, which is referred to as a

88

"discrimination coefficient" is also analogous to the notion
of a tariff in international trade. This discrimination
implies that the white discrimi-nators maximize a utility
with respect to both income and physical distance that they
desire to have from blacks. A white employer faced with a
money wage, W, in a competitive labor market, acts as if
W(1+di) were the real wage rate for blacks or women, where
di is the employer's discrimination coefficient against
employing blacks or women instead of whites or men whom he
prefers.

A similar personal discrimination coefficient can be
used for all types of economic interactions. For instance,
with a monetary price of P for a certain good, a white buyer
with a taste for discrimination against blacks, would act as
if this price were in fact P(1+di) if this buyer were faced
with a black seller of the product. Similarly, if a white
male employee, facing a wage offer of W, has a taste for not
working among blacks or female employees, he would act as if
the real wage he is offered were W(l-di), with di again
representing his discrimination coefficient.

In these models the discrimination coefficients alter
the supply and demand curves of the white males from what
they would have been in the absence of dis—crimination. Just
as in the competitive theory of international trade, in
which the existence of tariffs causes the marginal products
not to be equalized across countries, so too the existence

of discrimination in labor markets results in un—equalized

 

4.!

 

89

marginal products across races and sexes. As a result, the
total output of blacks, whites, and women falls short of its
optimum levels when there is discrimination in the labor
market.

The major problem with this theory of discrimination is
the persistence of earnings gaps between whites and blacks
and male and female workers.9 According to the theoretical
requirements of a competitive model of wage discrimination,
the economic pressures of a competitive market in fact
should have eliminated the earnings gaps between workers
long time ago. Since the amount of discrimination in this
model is determined by the marginal discrimination
coefficient of each individual economic agent, rather than
the average discrimination coefficient of whites and/or men,
the employer with the smallest discrimination coefficient
would have to pay lower wages than the highly discriminating
employer. These lower wage rates and thus lower costs would
make it possible for this employer to sell his product at a
lower price than the firms facing high costs because of
their discriminatory practices. Hence, the low cost non-
discriminatory employer should succeed in eliminating both
the high cost employer and ultimately discrimination itself
through competition.

One explanation for the persistence of discrimination
for decades, is given by Hamermesh and Rees:

Discrimination by employers based on their

own tastes and prejudices thus implies
that they do not maximize utility by their

 

 

90

willingness to sacrifice profits, paying
higher wages than they need to or
accepting workers less qualified than
others whom they recruit at the same wage,
in order to indulge their tastes about the
composition of the work force. This is in
direct contradiction to the traditional
Marxist analysis of discrimination, which

states that capitalists discriminate
against or exploit minorities in order to
increase their pecuniary profits. The

present analysis does not deny that some
whites, or even all whites taken together,
make monetary gains as a result of
discrimination in employment. Rather, it
asserts that the big gainers are the white
male workers who get the good jobs that,
in the absence of discrimination, would
have gone to women or minorities. To a
lesser extent non-discriminating
employers. . . also gain, for they can
hire equally qualified labor at a lower
wage. One leading economic consultant has
acknowledged this by hiring mostly women
for his company, arguing that they are
better qualified than the male economists
he can find and need be paid no more.1O

The persistence of discrimination is the result of
the tastes and actions of white male laborers and not the
employers. In fact, the white employer's discrimination
becomes irrelevant in this explanation and it is only
necessary to have white male workers, whith the necessary
skills for a certain employment, refusing to teach these
skills to blacks and women.11 The employer in this
explanation is simply forced to accept and even enforce the
discrimination coefficient of his white male workers who
possess the skills that the employer needs.

This explanation, being dependent upon labor's marginal

rather than average discrimination coefficient, runs into

the same problem that faces the general competitive theory

 

91

of discrimination. As long as there is one white male worker
at every skill level with a zero or very low discrimination
coefficient who is willing to teach the necessary skills to
the black or women employees, one can argue that these
skills can ultimately be taught to most blacks and women.
With the elimination of skill differentials, therefore, the
market itself should ultimately eliminate discrimination.
Moreover, the competitive labor market theorists have to
introduce an analysis of the development of a monopoly of
skills by white male workers in order to explain
discrimination in what starts out to be a competitive
theory.

A second explanation of the persistence of
discrimination given by the competitive labor market
theorists revolves around the distinction between a local
and a global optimum.12 According to this explanation, the
employer who could raise his profits by changing his
practice of hiring an all-white labor force is incapable of
perceiving this potential profit-maximizing opportunity
because he is involved in making only marginal changes. In
this explanation it is the discrimination coefficient of
white laborers that plays the major role in the persistence
of discrimination. The employer never perceives the
potential of the global maximum because he is always
involved with the lower profits and. the effects on his
local optimum. The local optimum can be lower through the

intense hostility of white employees towards adding blacks

92

or women to the labor force. Thus, the short-sighted
employer never shifts from a white labor force to an all—
black or even an integrated labor force.

The problem that this explanation faces is its reliance
on the ignorance of the employers in order to explain
persisting discrimination. The employer is perceived to be
unable to see what is good for him because he is only
interested in marginal changes and ignores both any other
kind of analysis that he himself is capable of conducting
and the kind of analysis that already exists in the economic
literature. The question arises: since the employers are not
so ignorant in other areas, why are they ignorant here?13

The major problem faced by the competitive theory of

discrimination —— a theory that predicts the elimination to
discrimination —— is, therefore, the persistence of
discrimination. There are other analytical problems.

Although this theory might be able to explain certain types
of job segregation, since it is a physical—distance theory
of discrimination, it clearly does not explain the kind of
discrimination practiced on the basis of social rather than
physical distance.14 In South Africa, for instance, the
white discriminator is served by and even hires blacks, but
he insists on maintaining a social distance between the
whites and blacks by specifying the relationship under which
the whites and blacks will live together. It is also not
possible to explain sex discrimination on the basis of a

physical distance theory of discrimination. It is not clear

 

 

93

that men try to achieve physical distance from women when
discriminating against them.

More generally, wage and price discrimination covers
only a limited range of all possible forms of
discrimination.

Discrimination can exist even when equal
wages can be paid for equal work if
individuals are not allowed to perform (or
acquire the characteristic necessary to
perform) equal work. These other types of
discrimination stand outside of the
standard competitive model of wage or
price discrimination.15

Recognizing the problems with the competitive theory of
discrimination, discrimination is explained by the liberal
economists through a monopoly rather than a competition

16

theory. More specifically, liberal economists argue that
the segment of the population -- whites, men, etc. —- who
can employ physical, social or economic pressures, act as
discriminating monopolists. This is consistent with the
general liberal conception of the economy itself as
characterized by a high degree of monopoly rather than
perfect competition. Thurow writes:

The minority group may have few options

and certainly not the option of refusing

to trade (with the monopolist).

Subsistence, social or physical, may force

them to. In the United States blacks live

in a white supremacist society, not just a

segregated society.17

Unlike the competitive model, in which the goal of the
discriminator is to maximize the physical distance between

himself and the person(s) he is discriminating against, the

monopoly model, by emphasizing monopoly power and thus

 

94

social distance, sees the white males deliberately
attempting to raise their income since they know that higher
income will lead to more social distance. The monopoly
model, therefore, avoids the major problem faced by the
competitive theory of accounting for the persistence of
discrimination. By emphasizing the existence of monopolies,
"society's average desire for social distance can be put in
place without being competed away by the man who does not
have a taste for social distance."18

According to the monopoly theory, there are a variety
of discriminatory practices thataenable the monopolist to
raise both social distance and his income. Employment
discrimination causes the discriminated segment of the
population to suffer a higher rate of unemployment than it
would have in the absence of discrimination. Wage
discrimination occurs when the monopolist pays the
discriminated group less than the value of its marginal
product. Occupational discrimination exists when women or
minorities are not permitted in certain prestigeous and high
income jobs, and are consequently more than proportionally
represented in less prestigious and thus lower—paying jobs.
Human capital discrimination results from the lower
investment of government and corporate funds in the human
capital of women and minorities, giving them less than equal
opportunity to acquire this type of investment. Capital

market discrimination exists in cases where women and

minorities are not given equal access to investment funds

 

 

 

 

95

needed to open profitable businesses. Finally, price
discrimination occurs when the prices of certain goods are
different for different segments of the population. It is on
the basis of these various discriminatory practices that
liberal economists explain the historical persistence of
19
discrimination.
The main enforcement mechanism, however,
comes from the interlocking nature of
different types of discrimination. If the
various types of discrimination are viewed
separately, there seem to be powerful
economic pressures leading to their
elimination. Suburban homeowners could
gain by selling to blacks. White employers
could increase profits by hiring blacks.
But when the several types of
discrimination are viewed together, the
economic pressures are either not present
or present in a much more attenuated
form.20

This phenomenon of interlocking and mutually re—
inforcing monopolies leads to the implication that it might
be a long time, if ever, before discrimination ends
automatically. Hence, —from the point of view of the
monopolistic theory of discrimination there is a substantial
role that the government could play through passing reform

21
laws to end discrimination.

Despite its greater ability to explain the phenomenon
of persisting discrimination, the monopolistic model of
discrimination like its competitive counterpart, is based on
the standard microeconomic mechanism of market clearing.

"Prices are used to clear markets in both models. The only

difference is that in the one, prices are competitively

 

 

 

96

determined and in the other, they are monopolistically
determined."22 Therefore, while the conservative economists
conclude that the employer who discriminates does so on
irrational grounds and thus loses money because of the
discriminatory practice; the liberal economists contend that
it costs the employer only a little if anything to indulge
his preference for discrimination. In fact, to the liberal
neoclassicist, the employer rationally maximizes both income
and social distance and quite often gains at least in the
short-run.

Like the competitive physical distance theory of
discrimination, the monopolistic social distance model has
difficulty explaining discrimination against women. It is
not clear that white men in fact raise the real standard of
their living by discriminating against their wives. In other
words, one could argue that the higher earnings of the white
men is lost through the lower earnings of their wives. Thus,
it is questionable that white men can unambiguously make
economic gains from male-female discrimination because of
the process of sharing income within the family. Moreover,
since both the husband and the wife belong to the same
social class, it is not at all clear that the social
distance emphasis of the monopolistic model is satisfactory
in explaining sex discrimination in terms of social
distance. Finally, neither the monopolistic nor the
competitive theory of discrimination can explain why and how

sex discrimination is created.

 

97

We saw that liberal neoclassicists ground women's
secondary economic status in a self-perpetuating cycle of
discrimination. These theorists, therefore, demand an end to
the discrimination against women.23 Following the liberal
assumption that policies in the general interest may emerge
from the competing demands of different interest groups, the
liberal neoclassicists propose to put pressure on government
officials to change their perception of and altitude towards
women. It is important to recognize here that the context of
this liberal policy prescription, as with the laissez-faire
prescription of the conservatives, is set within the
institutional arrangements of the capitalist economy. The
goal is to give women equal opportunity to participate in
the existing system. The argument for the elimination of
discrimination is rationalized on the basis of maximization
of each individual's contribution to society and of
increased efficiency.24 Thus, idiscrimination is not
economically rational from the point of view of society as a
whole, and must be eliminated on efficiency grounds.

Besides these "perception" and "attitude” problems,
liberal economists have posed the lack of data on women as
one of the main causes of discrimination against women.25
One of the vitally important solutions to discrimination is
the inclusion of women's work in statistics so that
government officials and policy makers may take them into

account. This is like saying that if the poor were counted

in the statistics, policies would be more likely to be

 

98

implemented to end their plight. Therefore, policy making is
essentially accepted to be a positivist enterprise wherein
technical experts make decisions about the feasibility of
different projects. Hence, the assumption is that once the
data is there, explanations and some solutions can be found.
It is clear that given the liberal neoclassicists'
adherence to positivism and capitalism, their explanations
of women's discrimination could not have been different
because they are fundamentally embedded in a particular
context and accept particular social and political relations
as given. They do not recognize that giving equal
opportunity to women is not the same as giving them power as
long as there are certain discourses within which
definitions and concepts of what women can and cannot do and
are and are not, place women in a subordinate position.26
Liberal positivists further assume that social
scientists and government policy makers are neutral
observers of objects, in our case of women.27 Moreover it-is
assumed that there is one correct answer to questions that
can rationally and impartially be reached by pointing out
the most efficient ways given resources. But one could ask:
efficiency in terms of what?: monetary cost? human labor?
suffering? time? In the context of the current system it
could be argued that it is only the interests of certain
segments of the population (such as capitalist or men or

both) that counts in the definitions of efficiency.

Furthermore, discussion of goals and ends is also

99

unnecessary for the positivist, because these questions
involve value judgments on how things ought to be.
Consideration of how things ought to be is irrational and
thus not considered legitimate. Ironically, however, by
taking the capitalist system as given, the liberal
neoclassicists themselves make normative prescriptions.

In the context of the discussion on women and the
sexual division of labor, what do these considerations mean?
The elimination of discrimination becomes an issue of
increased efficiency in the form of economic indicators and
those who make political decisions become a group of
technically trained experts who can provide the most
rational and efficient answers. These economists_ do not

question the underlying power relations.

FOOTNOTES

 

 

1. Hunt, pp; pipi, p. 422.

2. ipigi, p. 423.

3. ipigi, p. 423.

4. Cynthia Lloyd and Beth Niemi, The Economics g: §g§
Differentials, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).

5- £219;

6. £219;

7. Albert Rees and George Schultz, Workers and ngpg
ip pp Urban Aabor Market, (Chicago: University of Chicago

 

 

Press, 1970).

 

 

8. Daniel Hamermesh and Albert Rees, Third edition,
The Economics pi Work and Pay, (New York: Harper and Row,
1984).

9. Lester Thurow, Generating Inequality, (New York:

 

Basic Books Inc. 1975).
10. Hamermesh and Rees, op. cit., p. 312.

11. Thurow, op. cit.

12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 163.

 

16. Ibid.

 

17. Ibid., p. 164.

 

 

 

18. Ibid., p 165.
19. Ibid , p 166.
20. Ibid , p 168.

 

lOO

101

21. Ibid.

 

22. Ibid., p. 170.
23. Lloyd and Niemi, op. cit.

24. Ibid.; Barbara Rogers, The Domestication pf Women:
Discrimination ip Developing Societies, (London: Tavistoc
Publishers, 1980).

25. Rogers, op. cit.

26. _Discourses, according to Foucault, are rule
governed frameworks that are determined by underlying power
relations. Discourses can be analyzed by asking the
following questions: 1) What is it possible to speak of? 2)
What are the terms destined to disappear without any trace?
Which are destined, on the other hand, to enter in the
memory of people through ritualistic recitation, pedagogy
and teaching, entertainment and publicity? 3) Which are the
terms that everyone recognizes as valid and questionable or
definitely invalid? 4) What individuals, groups, or classes
have access to such a kind of discourse? See Michel
Foucault, "History, Discourse and Discontinuity,"
Salamagundi, No. 20, (1972), p. 234.

27. Lloyd and Niemi, op. cit.; Rogers op. cit.

 

CONCLUSION AND CRITIQUE

This concluding chapter summarizes the Marxist and
neoclassical theories of the sexual division of labor. It
critiques their respective contributions and limitations,

and their similarities and differences.

Apipf Summary 93 Mgpx Apg Engels

Marx and Engels' writings on women and the sexual
division of labor focused primarily on analyzing the
position of women in the wage labor system. Women are
considered a super—exploited segment of the working class;
they are exploited as workers and as women workers.
According to Marx and Engels, women experience this
oppressive status under capitalism because their special
family responsibility keeps them from being fully
proletarianized and thus considered full—fledged workers
with full pay. A necessary condition for the establishment
of equality between men and women, according to Marx and
Engels, would therefore be the full participation of women

in social production. Moreover, Marx and Engels considered

family needs, and thereby women's responsibilities, to be
superstructural, and therefore ultimately explained by
forces emanating from the economic base. Since the base of

the, capitalist economy is co—extensive with the sphere of

102

103

production, where capital extracts surplus value from wage
labor, the full participation of women in social production
(which is the necessary condition for their equality with
men) would only be possible with the overthrow of capitalism
and exploitation. Furthermore, in most of their writings on
this topic Marx and Engels seem to imply that this necessary
condition is also sufficient, that women's equality would be
automatically achieved when capitalist exploitation is

removed.

Contpibutions and Limitations

Though Marx and Engels' analysis of the position of
women in capitalist society was relatively simple and at
times fragmentary, even a casual survey of the contemporary
literature on women and the sexual division of labor reveals
that their work made a lasting contribution to the ongoing
discussion on the topic. But what does Marxism have to offer
to a coherent theory of the sexual division of labor?

Many people look to the work of Karl Marx as a starting
point for any examination of power and domination (whether
racial, class, or sexual). Marxist theorists of sexual
domination, however, have also been particularly attracted
by three aspects of Marx's work methodological tools. First,
it is historical. Rather than present, as do many social
scientists, a static and time-bound picture of social life,
Marxism seeks an understanding of the present in terms of

its connections to the past. Second, an important and

104

distinctive element of this historical approach is its focus
upon contradictions or tensions inherent in specific social
systems that are the dynamic sources of struggle and change.
This is the dialectical nature of Marxian method. The third,
and in some ways the most important, element of Marxism is
its focus on social relations. Society is not examined in
terms of values or ideology, but from the point of View of
the material base that generates these reflections and
ideologies, i. e., how people's actions and lives are shaped
through their interactions and responses to social
organizations. Thus, in the case of the sexual division of
labor in society, the Marxian approach requires that we
examine not only the jobs that men and women perform, but
also the relations and the context surrounding and producing
them.

Although the methodological and theoretical
contributions of Marxist analysis of capitalism and change
are important, also important is a recognition of what
Marxism does not do. There are many kinds of interactions
and social patterns that Marxism does not examine. Many of
the shortcomings of Marxism, pointed to by theorists of
women's issues, center upon the gender-blind categories of
Marxist analysis. With either an incomplete or no discussion
whatsoever of domestic or private life, gender is not
recognized as a distinct social category but ultimately
remains a given in the theory. As a result, because men and

women are discussed only as workers, we are given little

105

understanding why women qua women and men qua men are
assigned different roles within and outside the home.
Serious flaws stem from this public -— people as
capitalist or workers —— focus. For example, how are we to
understand patterns of male aggression and violence against
women? Frustrated workers may seem to be an explanation of
wife battering, but why is it that women are the victims of
this frustration? Or, how do we understand the pervasiveness
of rape, and thereby the systematic terrorization of all
women by men? These examples indicate the failure of
conventional Marxism to explain sexual domination; they
bring into question the limitations of the Marxian theory
of class domination. Some of the implications for class
domination can be seen in the following speculation. It is
highly probable that because working class men have other
areas of domination (i.e., over women and children)
available to them, this might mitigate the development of
their class consciousness. Speculations such as this can
only be substantiated or dismissed through an understanding
’of how all forms of domination -— class over class and men

over women -— interact.

The Contemporary Reaction; Strengths and Weaknesses

In light of these shortcomings yet with an awareness of
the valuable methodological tools mentioned above, many
contemporary theorists of the sexual division of labor have

turned to Marxism with a strong commitment not to repeat the

106

mistakes of the past. Considerable effort has been made not
to focus on one single aspect of domination and therefore
obscure its other forms. This emerges from a critique of
Marxism though not a rejection of its basic orientation,
namely, Marxism's humanistic concern and its commitment to
the possibility of universal human development.

Marx and Engels saw the full participation of women in
social production as a necessary and sufficient condition
for their equality with men. This argument is obviously
reductionist in the sense that it reduces everything that
happens under.capitalism (in this case, the oppression of
women) to capitalism and capitalism alone. In fact, however,
neither Marx and Engels nor any of the subsequent Marxist
theorists have satisfactorily established a theoretical link
between women's subordination and class relations. Also,
empirically this theory has become less and less acceptable
since the post World War II economic expansion that has
brought more and more women into the labor force. Neither
the unequal conditions women have faced in paid labor nor
the oppression they have experienced in the home have
dissipated, however, as Marxism suggests should be the case.
The Third World countries suggest another empirical disproof
of this theory. In these countries women have long
constituted an important and often even the principal
agrarian producers, though they are still manifestly
subordinate to men. Further, though the socialist countries

provide examples of women's full integration into social

107

production, the sexual division of labor in the home and the
society as a whole persists in these societies.1

In fact, in most societies the prediction of sexual
equality consequent to women's participation in the market
has been undermined by the reality of women having to work
the double shift of paid market and unpaid domestic work.
The recognition of this reality by Marxist theorists of
women's position has given rise to a number of attempts to
deal theoretically with the social relations of the family
as part of the material base of society. But in most cases,
the family has qualified for membership in the material base
only as long as it has been considered as site of
production. It would then be a straight-forward step to
apply Marxist methods of analysis to the particular form of
family production. These analyses of family production have
yet to provide the intended material explanation of women's
oppression.2

It is important to recognize that the materialist
method is useful specifically because it requires not only
an historically specific treatment of societies, but also a
recognition that the categories of analysis are themselves
historically bound. Thus, materialist analysis should treat
the categories and tools of analysis as specific to the
particular societies and circumstances examined, while
allowing that these categories and tools may change as
society changes. By simply applying the categories of

Marxism to the case of family production without adapting

108

these categories specifically to an analysis of relations
within the family, theorists are able to analyze only the
impact of outside forces upon the family; Marxist categories
are incapable of shedding light on the tensions and
contradictions originating within the family. Since all the
categories drawn from Marxist theory are gender-blind, the
analyses that employ these categories are at best able to
develop an incomplete understanding of the subordination of
domestic laborers and fail to uncover the relation between
domestic labor and the sex of the laborer.

The recognition of this weakness in what has been
labeled the "domestic labor" literature has lead to attempts
to explain a system of male power over women on a
theoretical basis that does not derive from the Marxist
theory of capitalism. The use of the non-Marxist category
patriarchy has become common. Theorists have primarily
attempted to provide a framework for the analysis of
patriarchy by connecting it to either the construction of
gender identity in psychoanalytic terms or notions of male
control of female labor power.3 On more general grounds.
these theorists argue that since women's subordinate
position has extended across different cultures and modes of
production, it cannot be explained solely through the
internal logic of any mode of production in particular.
Therefore, in order to explain the sexual division of labor
and the subordinate position of women under capitalism,

these theorists propose to examine the intersection between

109

two sets of relatively. autonomous social forces —-
capitalism and patriarchy.

This dichotomy of capitalism and patriarchy, has left
unexplained the relation between patriarchy and the
capitalist economic process. The search for the links
between patriarchy and capitalist relations has led some
theorists to focus upon a particular dimension of the sexual
division of labor, namely, that domain of work which has
continually been the exclusive preserve of women -— child
care and the provision of a range of domestic services for
adults (referred to in the literature as "reproductive"
work). The reason for using the term "reproductive" is that
this work has seemed to be especially closely related to the
reproduction of human life, which is crucial to an
understanding of patriarchy. Thus, a clearer understanding
of these "reproductive" tasks and the social relations under
which they are performed in different societies at different
times has seemed to provide a link between economic and
noneconomic factors in the maintenance of women's
subordinate position.

More particularly, the treatment of reproductive
relations permits the theorists to introduce the biological
distinction of sex in the specific sense that under
capitalism the production of labor power involves not only
the rearing of future generations of workers but also the
bearing of future ‘generations of workers. Therefore,

although in capitalist production gender roles are

110

differentiated, capitalist production relations, because
they are gender—blind, cannot provide the link between
gender roles in production and the sex of those who perform
work. One could attempt to link the biological distinction
of sex and the social distinction of gender by arguing that
current reproduction relations are socially specific
constructs, much as production relations have been believed
to be by some social scientists (including Marxists).
Accordingly, some theorists argue that sexuality has been
shaped, formed and even created by categories and
definitions which control and characterize sexual practices.
Sexuality, therefore, has no essential nature prior to its
social construction.4

Of course, recognizing the existence of social
constructs other than those of production does not indicate
anything about the relation between these different social
constructs. It is possible that there exists a hierarchy of
determinants of these social forms and that some are derived
from others. In short, the theoretical problem of the
dichotomy that these theorists begin with remains unsolved.

Marxist theorists of women have attempted to tackle
this problem from many different angles.5 In Chapter III
some of these attempts were examined with the result that
most of them either ultimately leave this fundamental
duality intact or, more commonly, subordinate sexual

oppression to class exploitation, thereby, eliminating the

problem in the manner of Marx and Engels.

111

The most successful theoretical handling of the problem
of duality has been that of Susan Himmelweit.6 Himmelweit
argues, first, that the development of capitalist production
has meant the continual development of the production of
use-value, since surplus value can only be extracted when a
use-value is produced. Thus, capitalist production
activities, which are only one particular socially-specific
way of meeting needs, have come to dominate other kinds of
activity. "Needs, potentially satisfiable by production,
have taken precedence over all other needs, and the
production of use-value over other activities which satisfy
needs."7

While everything else is produced as use-value, people
themselves are not, specifically because capitalist
production relations require that people be free to sell
their own labor—power. In a capitalist society human
reproduction is not a production activity. There is a
separation of human reproduction from production per se that
is specific to capitalism and not trans-historical. For
instance, in slave societies, these two activities were one
and the same in that women slaves approaching child-bearing
age were sold at prices comparable to prices for men, even
though their potential to produce non-human products was
diminished.9 Under capitalism, however, reproductive
activities are excluded from the socially defined activity

of production, because as Himmelweit puts it, "at some point

the reproductive process must cross outside the boundary of

112

capitalist production relations in order that resultant
people may re-enter as free wage-labor."lO

Thus Himmelweit has provided one reason (if. not a
solution) for the existence of theoretical duality in the
theory of women's subordinate position. In effect, she
concludes that the duality that generates the theoretical
problem is in fact the problem of capitalism. Unless it is
recognized that production does not have a trans-historical
character, capitalist society will continue to impose gits
own solution to this dualism by requiring that production
dominate all other activities. The political implications of
this analysis are that the social predominance of production
per se in capitalist society must itself be challenged in
order to ‘challenge women's relegation to the sphere of
reproduction. Thus, although Himmelweit emphasizes the
historical (as opposed to trans-historical) reality of the
domination of productive over reproductive relations under
capitalism, she nonetheless solves the problem of duality in
the contemporary Marxist analyses of the sexual division of
labor by postulating the hierarchy of first production and

then reproduction, thereby still subsuming the category of

gender to class.

Brief Summary pf the Chicago School g: Neoclassicism
Neoclassical economists' interest in and investigation
of a wide range of what had traditionally been considered

non—market phenomena, including the "new home economics",

113

derives from their definition of the nature of the
discipline of economics. Specifically, an issue becomes
economic for the neoclassical economist whenever scarcity is
involved. Scarcity requires choice which in turn requires an
analysis of the costs and benefits of alternative
allocations of scarce resources. Since the early or mid-
sixties, neoclassicists have recognized that if they define
"resources" and "costs and benefits" broadly enough they can
apply their economic theory to almost all aspects of human
behavior. Thus their conception of "resources" has been
expanded to include not only the physical environment, but
also human resources and time. Rational maximizing
individuals, who have the information needed to evaluate and
ultimately choose between competing courses of action
regarding these resources, base their decisions on the
balance between costs (which are now measured in terms of
both time and money) and benefits (which may be monetary
and/or nonmonetary).

With regard to the "new home economics" in particular,
individuals participate in a marriage market in which,
through cost/benefit analysis, they decide when to marry,
whether to marry at all, and who to choose among all the
alternative partners available. Once they do marry and form
a family, they are involved in a number of additional
decisions, such as the amount of market and non-market work
that needs to be done, who should do each, and what

combination of market versus home produced goods (including

114

children) to consume. Sexual division of labor is a function
of rational allocative decision making by the individuals

within the family.

Contributions and Limitations

The question that needs to be asked at this point is:
what insights and findings has neoclassicism generated in
these traditionally noneconomic areas, specifically, the
"new home economics"? Most of the literature in the "new
home economics" can be divided into analyses of three
issues: (a) marriage and divorce, (b) fertility, and (c) the
sexual division of labor within the home and its consequent
implications for the division of labor in the market,
especially in terms of differential earnings of men and

women and their respective labor force participation rates.

(a) Marriage and Divorce

According to the economic theory of marriage developed
by Gary Becker, there are basically three motivations for
marriage among adults. First, it is more efficient for
people who have frequent contact with one another to
ultimately live together on a more permanent basis. The
consequent specialization and division of labor within
marriage is itself a source of efficiency, and therefore a
second motivation for marriage. Finally, a fundameptal

motivation for marriage is the desire to have children.

According to Becker each marriage is in reality a two-

 

115

person firm in which both husband and wife are entrepreneurs
who hire each other in order to make a profit. Both the man
and the woman gain by marriage. However, if there is also
love between the two, the potential gains from marriage can
be increased, when each partner also takes pleasure in the
consumption and well-being of the other. Of course, for each
individual the gains from marriage have to be weighed
against the associated costs, ranging from monetary costs
(such as the wedding ceremony and fees) to nonmonetary costs
(such as the opportunity cost of settling down rather than
searching more, or the cost of losing the independence of
being single). According to this theory, the net gain to
marriage is positively related to the relative differences
wage rates and in the house-hold productivity of the man and
woman. This gain is also positively related to each spouse's
unearned income, to the degree of desire for children, and
to the degree of caring. Moreover, except in the case of
wage rates, men and women's activities are generally seen to
be complementary rather than substitutes for one another.

From the point of view of neoclassical economists, and
according to their standards of theory evaluation,
contributions of the theory are to be identified by asking,
"What kinds of empirically testable implications emerge from
this analysis, and where does the evidence support the
theory?"12

Since observations on love and caring and the desire

for children are generally not available, the theory can be

116

neither tested nor supported on the basis of claims
regarding these phenomena. It is quite possible, however, to
test the effects of income on marriage. Prior to the
development of Becker's theory of marriage, studies of
marriage and women's labor force participation did not
distinguish between wife's and husband's earnings or their
earned and unearned income.13 A not insignificant
theoretical contribution of the new developments in this
area has been the making of these distinctions. On the
empirical level, as a result of these developments and the
availability of data,‘ evidence has emerged which .suggests
that marriage and marital stability are much less influenced
by the level of earned income than by differences in the
earnings of husband and wife and differences in their
unearned income or wealth.14 These results are consistent
with the implications and predictions of the theory.
Moreover, studies have also shown that men and women who
marry tend to be fairly similar with respect to various
traits such as age, race, education and IQ, and that
marriages in which partners have these similar
characteristics tend to be more stable.15 Again these
results are consistent with the predictions of the theory.
Finally, empirical studies have consistently shown that
marriages are more frequent, and also more stable, when
women's wages and labor force participation are lower than

16
men's.

117

(b) Fertility

Prior to the development of the 'new home economics',
economic theory made little attempt to explain why people
have children or why some have more and some less than
others. Though at that time the size of the population was
considered either the cause or the effect of economic
phenomena such as the rate of economic growth, children's
arrival was either viewed as exogenous or random within the
theory. In the new literature, children are considered
either consumer durables or producer. durables. They are
[consumer durables if they create a stream of future utility
and satisfaction for their parents in the same way that
other more commonly recognized consumer durables such as
cars and houses do. Children are producer durables if they
produce a stream of future income for their parents such as
retirement income.17

The "new home economics" theorists argue that in less
developed countries and in rural areas of developed
countries children are more appropriately categorized as
producer durables since their value as workers is high,
i.e., they can produce a stream of income for their parents.
These theorists use this analysis to explain the high
fertility rates in rural and less developed areas; parents
receive a higher stream of future income the more children
they have. Conversely, in the urban, industrial areas of the
world, where systems of social insurance are well developed,

children are better treated as consumer durables. Parents

118

have less need for the potential stream of income from their
children and therefore have less children though spending
more time and money the ones they do have in order to
increase the stream of satisfaction they receive from each.

The parents' decision and the supply and demand for
children possess qualitative as well as quantitative
dimensions. Parents not only decide about how many children
to have, but also about how much time, energy, and money to
invest on each child.

Since the rearing of children from the perspective of
consumer or producer durables involves considerable
expenditure of time, it is easy to see why in rich
industrialized societies, in which the opportunity cost of
time is quite high, the fertility rate is relatively low. On
the other hand, in poor, rural societies, people lack a
variety of alternative uses for their time. In these
societies, children obviously do not interfere with evenings
at theatre, trips abroad, and high paying jobs. The "new
home economics" argues that the time costs of children in
these latter societies are relatively low compared to the
benefits of children as producer durables.

The "new home economics," then, does provide an
explanation of the declines in fertility that have followed
periods of economic growth. This explanation is a matter of
the economics of time: as time becomes a more expensive
resource, the demand for time—intensive goods such as

children decreases.

119

On empirical grounds, economic studies of fertility
have established that fertility is negatively related to the
value of the mother's time.18 Although the evidence on the
effects of income on fertility are not unequivocal, it has
been argued that at higher income levels parents substitute
quality for quantity. Specifically, more affluent families
spend more time and money on each child and thus acquire
children of presumably higher quality, in much the same way
that they buy expensive and presumably higher quality

19
automobiles, food and clothing.

(c) Sexual Division of Labor

In contrast to the insights contained in the "new home
economics" analyses of marriage and fertility, the
associated analysis of the sexual division of labor in the
home and the market makes less of a contribution to
understanding why women's wages and labor force
participation rates are lower than men's. Moreover, as
presented in Chapter III, the neoclassical analysis of the
sexual division of labor involves a circularity of reasoning
which limits its conclusions.

In the neoclassical theory of marriage, one of the
sources of gains from marriage is a difference in the wages
of men and women. In the analysis of fertility, the price of
time (which is primarily represented by the mother's wage)
is also one of the important determinants of fertility. In

both the theory of marriage and the theory of fertility

120

women's wage rates are a key explanatory variable. It is
important to recognize, however, that in both cases this
variable is essentially treated as a given. In other words,

0

in order to explain why people marry, have children and why
women have lower labor force participation rates than men,
the "new home economics" uses the lower wages of women as a
key explanatory variable. However, why do women earn less
than men? The theory's answer, which is derived from human
capital theory, is that since women marry, bear and rear
children, their labor force participation is lower than
men's, and this lower labor force participation diminishes
their labor market experience and thus productivity, leading
to lower earnings. In its explanation of women's lower wage
rates, the neoclassical theory has to treat marriage,
fertility, and the division of labor within the home as
givens. The reasoning is circular. This circularity, and
thus the inability to explain the sexual division of labor,
ultimately forces Becker to claim that this division of
labor comes about as a result of inherent biological
differences between the sexes.20

Empirical work on these topics seems to reflect the
inadequacies of the theory. The general practice in
empirical work in this area has been to estimate the
proportion of the wage differential between men and women
that is attributable to differences in productivity-related

characteristics of men and women, such as age, length of

schooling, and the level of experience. In these studies,

121

the unexplained portion of this wage differential has been
shown to be substantial.21

Moreover, if it is empirically true, as some have
argued, that the amount of on-the-job training required for
non-professional workers is minimal and that their peak
productivity and efficiency is reached after only a few days
or weeks, then the foundation of the theory of human capital
is itself of questionable value.22 Human capital theory
predicts that women's lower wages are due to less experience
and less on-the—job training. Yet years of experience and
training may in fact have little to do with the development
of skills. Experience may simply reflect seniority
arrangements established by trade unions. In this case,
women's lower earnings might be ascribed to an absence of

union power, rather than to a lack of productivity and

skills.

[pg Aiberai Neoclassicai Reactioni Strengths and Weaknesses
As was argued in Chapter III, Becker's attempt to
explain the split between market and home along gender lines
reveals his fundamentally naturalistic and biological
understanding of social and economic phenomena. Ultimately
for Becker, it is the biological differences between men and
women that give rise to the sexual division of labor. The
liberal neoclassicists, however, reject Becker's assumption
that the essential determinants of the sexual division of

labor are the natural, biological differences between men

 

122

and women. These economists advocate a symmetrical treatment
of men and women as essentially equal rather than inherently
unequal individuals. It is accordingly argued that if in
fact we begin by assuming that women and men are essentially
equal, then we must recognize that the character of women's
specific labor supply (i.e., their lower and more
discontinuous labor force participation) represents a
rational response to a market that is discriminatory. These.
economists thus see a self—perpetuating pattern of
discrimination that restricts women's occupational choice,
offers them lower earnings relative to men, and forces them
into conditions of higher unemployment.23

The fundamental assumptions of these economists are
that discrimination and inequities exist and that they can
be corrected through active state intervention. The
reformist orientation of these economists has yielded many
practical insights into the problem of gender inequities in
a world in which the needs for change and reform are
perceived by many to be overwhelming.

As we saw in the previous Chapter, however, this
approach does not attempt to study systematically how
capitalism has either produced or perpetuated these
problems. Rather, the approach is essentially directed
towards demonstrating the extent of these problems so as to
permit reforms of the circumstances from which they arise.
Moreover, this approach is carried on in the context of

capitalist institutions, thus taking the existence of its

123

power structure for granted, and assuming that the reformers

themselves are neutral and objective observers of society.

Differences between Marxism and Neoclassicism

 

The most fundamental difference between the Marxist and
the neoclassical approach is that each has defined the
problem at hand quite differently and has thus gone about
tackling it differently. For the neoclassicists, women are
yet another group explainable in terms of rational
maximizing behavior and about whom the usual economic models
can be formulated. Marxists, on the other hand, have set out
to understand and explain the position of women in the
capitalist system, in general assuming that the subordinate
status of women reflects the basic exploitive character of
the system.

While neoclassicists emphasize the operation of the
market, Marxists are more interested in production. On the
whole, Marxists attempt to take a broader historical view of
economic processes, thus viewing prices determined by supply
and demand and market incomes as short run manifestations of
more fundamental social forces involving capital
accumulation and class struggle. Therefore, while
neoclassicists focus on change via an examination of the
consequences of price and income variation, Marxists believe
that such quantitative analysis ultimately conceals more
fundamental qualitative changes and transformations in

society. For instance, while for neoclassicists changes in

124

income generally lack any distinctively qualitative
dimension, such that individuals respond in a stable and
predictable manner to changes in income over time, Marxists,
by viewing changes in subsistence income against a
qualitative backdrop of varying stages in history, argue for
fundamentally different responses from individuals according
to the historical period at hand.

In neoclassical economic theory the primary unit of
analysis is the individual, while in Marxist theory economic
class is fundamental. Moreover, the neoclassical approach is
ahistorical in the sense that the behavioral motives that it
ascribes to individuals are timeless and can be applied to
any agent in any society at any time. Marxists, however,
contend that the behavior of economic agents must be
understood historically in terms of class struggle and not
simply in terms of the logical requirements of the theory of
individuals. Marxists accordingly treat behavior as neither
exogenous nor unchanging over time and while Marxist theory
presupposes class struggle throughout different historical
periods, this struggle nonetheless takes on distinct forms
in each period. Further, not only do class relations differ
in each mode of production, but individual behavior also
varies according to class membership. Thus, while all
individuals in capitalist society do respond to changes in
market prices, there are nonetheless distinct differences in
the ways in which workers and capitalists respond. The

contemporary Marxist, Jane Humphries, for example, shows

125

that in the analysis of family, prices and income are as
relevant to a Marxist account of the family, as they are
indeed to the "new home economics".24 But while neoclassical
economists consider variations in prices and income in order
to examine the impact of these variables on individual
choices concerning marriage, fertility, etc., and thus
deduce the rationality of a division of labor by gender,
Humphries in contrast asks how working class individuals use
the family as an instrument to alter income and prices,25
and argues that discrimination against women is in fact
intensified in the process of class struggle.

Finally, since individuals in neoclassical theory enjoy
freedom of choice and therefore bear responsibility for
their choices, women's lower earnings, greater unemployment
and occupational segregation cannot be regarded as unjust.
In contrast, both early and contemporary Marxists believe
that women's position in capitalist societies is a
subordinate and oppressive one and therefore unjust. Indeed,
the explicit goal of the Marxists is to do more than explain
the subordinate position of women; they hope their work will
contribute to the elimination of what they regard as
injustice.26

One might conclude, then, that the neoclassical
approach is essentially positive, while the Marxist approach
is essentially prescriptive and thus normative. The two

theories, however, differ less in this respect than it might

seem. Indeed both theories have normative and positive

 

126

aspects. The difference between the two is that Marxism is
explicitly and self-consciously normative, while
neoclassicism is only implicitly so, in the sense that
neoclassical theorists typically deny that normative
positions are present in their explanations. Thus, one could
well argue that by accepting the status of women in
capitalist society neoclassicists advocate normative views

no less than do Marxists.

Similarities between the Marxists and the Neoclassicists

’ From what has been said above, it is fair to conclude
that both the neoclassical and Marxist theories of the
sexual division of labor make substantive contributions to
our understanding of this issue, though on entirely
different grounds. The two approaches share few of the
characteristics that give each its respective strengths.
There are, on the other hand, certain weaknesses that are
common to the two theories. This section identifies the
characteristics shared by the theories that serves as their
limitations as explanations of the sexual division of labor
in contemporary society.

In terms of logical consistency, that each theory
suffers from essentially two specific problems: reductionism
and circularity.

The Marxist analysis of the sexual division of labor is
reductionist because it treats this issue, and indeed any

other in capitalist society, solely in terms of capitalist

 

127

economic forms. This mode of reasoning weakens Marxist
analysis theoretically, since in fact no theoretical link
has been demonstrated to obtain between women's
subordination and capitalist class relations. Indeed,
empirical work seems to support the conclusion that
reductionist assumptions are inappropriate to an analysis of
both developed and underdeveloped capitalist and socialist
countries.

Neoclassical theory is also reductionist since it
reduces the full range of individual behavior to responses
to but two variables: changes in income and prices. This
conceptualization of human behavior is clearly evident in
the Stigler and Becker argument presented in Chapter III, in
which they point to the centrality of market prices and
incomes in the neoclassical theory, and argue that even
apparent differences in tastes can ultimately be explained
by these two variables alone.

Chapter III examined the problem of circularity in the
neoclassical theory. This circularity essentially renders
the neoclassical theory incapable of providing any
explanation of the sexual division of labor and all the
subsequent topics that stem from this division (marriage,
fertility, etc.).

The circularity of reasoning in the Marxian analysis of
the sexual division of labor is not as easily detectable but
is nonetheless present. Marx and Engels both believed that

the first division of labor and the first class antagonism

128

arose with the appearance of private property and the
relationship between man and woman in the monogamdus family.
Thus they labelled the husband as the bourgeois and the wife
as the proletarian; The implication of their argument is
that the division of labor in society emanates from the
division of labor in the family. The family is "a miniature
picture of the contrasts and contradictions of society at
large."27 When attention is turned to Marx and Engels'
analysis of women's subordinate position within the family,
however, it is seen that all their categories of analysis
that account for the oppression of women in the family in
fact derive from relations of production in the society at
large. Although they began by claiming that the family
initiated class society, ultimately the relations in the
family came to be completely determined by class relations
in general. In the end, family relations are not
constitutive of class relations in society and are no longer
spoken of as a fundamental source of the division of labor
in broader economic relations. This circularity of reasoning
in Marxism, not only limits the analysis of the sexual
division of labor but it also affects the Marxist account of
class and the economy. If there is in fact a reciprocal
relationship between the family and society, then the
family, rather than being merely a reflection of the
relations of production, should itself contribute to the
structure of these relations and therefore society itself.

Establishment 'of the problems of reductionism and

129

circularity common to Marxism and neoclassicism enables the
identification of limitations of these theories considered

as specifically social theories. The first is the problem of

economic functionalism, the second is the problem of
naturalism.
Economic functionalism involves explaining and

interpreting society as the result of what is needed or
required by the economy. In Marxism, the family exists
because it serves capitalism and the interests of the
capitalist class. Consequently, women's subordination in the
family can be eliminated if and only if there is an
abandonment of the capitalist economy. In neoclassicism,
economic functionalism shows itself somewhat differently. In
this theory the primary agents in society, the rational
maximizing essence of individual behavior is: defined
strictly in terms of the functional requirements of the
neoclassical economic model and its ideal formulation of the
capitalist system.

The second and possibly most significant point of
intersection between these two theories is their common
problem of naturalism. Naturalism is the view that at some
fundamental level social phenomena can be explain by natural
phenomena.

Identifying the root of naturalism in neoclassical
theory is not difficult, since in fact the economic agent of
neoclassical investigation is coextensive with the

biological individual. Indeed, as such this individual lacks

130

an intrinsically social aspect and is without historical,
class, racial, or cultural affiliations. With an essentially
biological conception of the agent, it is not surprising
that "intrinsic biological differences between the sexes"
are ultimately the explanation Becker gives for the sexual
division of labor in neoclassicism.28 As an economic theory
this naturalistic explanation weakens the neoclassical
theory considerably.

In Marxian analysis and method, naturalistic bias is
much more difficult to explain. Indeed, Marx and most
Marxists have always claimed that their's is a fundamentally
social and historical approach. Historical materialism is at
least in principle radically opposed to the naturalistic and
biological accounts of society, since it attributes women's
subordination or any other social phenomenon to social and
economic rather than biological causes. Yet there are
passages in the works of Marx and Engels that refer to the
"natural" division of labor.29 Indeed, at times they take as
the appropriate model of the sexual division of labor that
in which women "naturally" remain in the domestic sphere
while men leave the home. The result is an apparent
contradiction in the notions found in Engels' Origins 9; 3p;
Family concerning the "appropriateness" of women's qualities
for the domestic sphere.30

Furthermore, Marx and Engels believed that with the

socialization of housework, the entry of women into

production, and free choice in marriage, a new family, free

131

from oppressive relationships, would automatically be
created. This view not only overestimates the ease with
which housework can be socialized (as is evident from the
experience of socialist countries) and underplays the non-
economic elements of women's oppression (for example, that
even the socialized aspects of housework are often done by
women), but it also ignores the problem of equalizing
responsibility within the home (since it is only
"appropriate" for ygmgp to do housework).

In conclusion, it is pertinent ti ask what is known
about the sexual division of labor after decades (if not
centuries) of intellectual work bearing this issue and after
having critically traced the development of economic theory
in this area of two opposing schools of economic thought.
The question may first be turned around: What is p23 known
about the sexual division of labor? This question is not
simply a play on words but is in fact crucial for at least
two reasons.

First, since this work has largely been a critique, it
has led to the elaboration of the problems and blind-spots
in economic theories of the sexual division of labor. In the
development of economic thought, critical analysis has often
been significant in the development of economic theory. For
example, Piero Sraffa's work can in large part be classified
as critique, with one of its most significant contributions
being the clarification of what is now known about the

limitations of neoclassical economic categories, for

132

example, the conditions appropriate for use of an aggregate
production function. Second, an answer to the question of
what is not known provides the necessary hints and direction
to be search .for more appropriate and more complete
analysis.

The most important result of the critique of both the
Marxian and the neoclassical theories of the sexual division
of labor is the recognition that the sexual division of
labor cannot be explained in strictly economic terms.
Neither the market-oriented category of the rational
maximizing individual of neoclassical theory nor the
economic category of class of Marxism were alone able to
provide a complete account of the sexual division of labor.
Their common problems of circularity, reductionism, and
naturalism ultimately led each theory to take for granted
the underlying power structure involved in sexual relations
and thereby to build a theory of sexual division of labor
which is essentially one-dimensional and incomplete.

As for the question of what is known, it is clear that
both theories acknowledge the existence and legitimacy of
household production and housework. This acknowledgment has
correctly led both schools to develop analyses of the family
in order to explain the sexual division of labor. In the
context of a general understanding of an economic theory of
the family, and in spite of the distinct differences between
Conflict-oriented Marxism and equilibrium—oriented

neoclassicism, the family is seen to be not only the locus

133

of an affectionate bond between a man, a woman, and their
children, but as representing a convenient and efficient
mean of surviving in capitalist society. Families in
general and individual men and women in particular do the
best they can within their respective opportunity sets.
Indeed, both Marxists and neoclassicists agree that families
respond to the market variables of income and prices (though
they give different reasons for this response).

It is also known that microeconomic analysis of the
family needs to be complemented with a more macroeconomic
orientation that views factors such as class as at least
partial determinants of the differential behavior of human
beings as individual men and women and as members of
particular socio-economic groups. 'It is also know that this
analysis has to be historical, since the sexual division of
labor has varied over time as well as across different
social strata. It has also been learned that there is a
difference between the labor force participation of men and
women, since women are constrained by their home
responsibilities and discrimination in the labor market.
Liberal neoclassicists have shown the need for reform in the
labor market, while the history of the development of
Marxism has shown that the labor force participation of
women alone does not guarantees sexual equality (as can be
seen by the reality of women having the double shift of paid
market and unpaid domestic work). This clearly indicates the

need for substantive reform, a reform that not only brings

 

134

women into traditional "men jobs" by reforming the labor
market, but one which also integrates men into traditional
"women jobs," including housework.

Recognition of the limitations of a strictly economic
analysis in each theory indicates the need to look beyond
traditionally economic categories to develop a satisfactory
explanation of the sexual division of labor. Specifically,
there are two matters that appear particularly relevant for
an understanding of gender and sexual division of labor:
first, the process of constitution of gender, and second the
question of noneconomic as opposed to economic power. The
discussion that follows will briefly consider each of these
in order to see how they are each relevant to an
understanding of sexual division of labor.

Even if discussion is limited to the types of positions
occupied by women in the workplace, i.e., the jobs that
society customarily assigns to them in the economy, as a
location for gender construction, while it is hard Ito
disagree that there is a real differentiation between the
characteristics of women and men as potential workers, it
can be argued that this differentiation is far from being
naturally determined. For instance, women are often thought
manually dexterous. Yet the "natural nimble fingers" of
young women may not be inherited from their mothers in the
same way as the color of their skin or eyes. They may rather
be the result of training received from their mothers and

other female kin from early childhood in tasks that are

135

considered "naturally" (but really "socially") appropriate
for women. Since industrial sewing of clothing closely
resembles domestic sewing, women who have learned such
sewing at home already, "naturally" have the manual
dexterity required.

It is in part because this training, as with so many
other activities performed by women that customarily fall
under the label of domestic labor, is socially invisible and
privatized that the skills it produces are attributed to
nature. Not accidentally, the jobs that require this type of
training are often classified as unskilled or semi-skilled.
At the same time, given the high level of manual dexterity
required in many of the jobs performed by women,31 it is
clear that the categorization of these jobs as "unskilled"
does not derive from the purely natural character of the
job. For many of these jobs little on-the-job training is
required, specifically because women are already trained in
the home. But of course, skill categories are not determined
in an unbiased and purely objective manner.32 Jobs which are
identified as "women's work" tend to be identified as
"unskilled" or "semi-skilled," whereas technically similar
jobs identified as "men's work" tend to be classified as
"skilled." To a large extent, then, women perform
"unskilled" labor because they perform women's labor, rather
than perform unskilled labor because they are truly

unskilled.

The social invisibility of domestic training that

 

136

produces skills of manual dexterity and the lack of social
recognition that these skills receive is not accidental. It
is intrinsic to the process of gender construction. For the
process of gender differentiation no more produces two
"separate but equal" genders than does apartheid produce two
separate but equal roles for blacks and whites in South
Africa. Rather, the process is itself a process of the
social construction of women as a human category. This
process of subordination can be partly understood in terms
of the exclusion of women from certain activities and their
confinement to others. Moreover, the activities from which
women per se are excluded are often those which are
constituted as public, explicitly social activities, and the
activities to which women per se are confined are typically
constituted as intrinsically private and essentially
individual.

This raises a second relevant matter, namely, power.
The constitution of activities as public and private, social
and individual, of course differs over time and across
different types of society. The importance of activities in
which the social aspect is dominant is that they confer
social power and prestige. This is not to say, of course,
that no power whatsoever is conferred by those activities in
which the private aspect is dominant. It is a mistake,
however, to see private power and social power as equal.
Social power is collective, reproducible through social

processes, and relatively autonomous from the

137

characteristics of particular individuals. Private power, as
essentially individual, is contingent on the specific
characteristics of particular individuals and is generally
reproducible only by chance, while influenced by social
power structure.

Therefore, what should be stressed, in contrast to the
naturalistic bias of both the Marxists and the
neoclassicists, is that women's status is socially
determined to be specifically subordinate. What must be
explained is why it is that woman's job is to do the work
which nurtures children, men and older generations —— work
which appears to be purely private and personal -- while it
is the man's job to represent women and children in the
society at large in which public power dominates private
power.

If it is the case that the most important thing
learned about the sexual division of labor is that it cannot
be explained in strictly economic terms, and that therefore
a more appropriate framework of analysis is needed, one that
incorporates categories of gender and power, then it is fair
to say that Marxism shows more promise in developing a more
adequate theory and overcoming its weaknesses than does
neoclassicism. This is because Marxist economic theory is
more responsiveIto considerations of power. At any rate,
there is currently considerable debate surrounding the
appropriate terms of explanation for questions of gender,

race, etc., in Marxism. Indeed the direction of development

138

in the contemporary Marxian theory of the sexual division of
labor seems to be away from economic categories and toward
conceptualization of noneconomic frameworks of analysis.
This direction can be seen in the development of concepts
such as "patriarchy" and "reproduction." On the other hand,
considerations of power are generally excluded from the
neoclassical analysis of sexual division of labor. Moreover,
all categories of analysis in the "new home economics" are
bound up with strict economic interpretations, and there

does not seem to be much revisionist ferment in this area.

FOOTNOTES

 

1. Maxine Molyneux, "Women in Socialist Societies:
Problems of Theory and Practice", Feminist Review, n.8,
(1981).

2. Himmelweit and Mohun, op. cit.

3. Mitchell, "Longest Revolution", op. cit. ; Delphy,
op. cit.

4. Michel Foucault, The History pf Sexuality, (New

 

 

York: Vintage, 1980).
5. Young, op. cit. ; Kelley, op. cit.

6. Susan Himmelweit, "The real Dualism of Sex and
Class", Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 16, n.

—m_1

1, (1984), pp 167-83.
7. Ibid., p. 179.
8. This is of course different from the neoclassical

theory which considers children as durable commodities.
Himmelweit, op. cit., p. 180.

9. Ibid., p. 180.

10. Ibid., p. 180. For a recent formal analysis of the
relationship between human reproduction, women's
subordination, and capitalist labor exploitation, see J. B.
Davis, "A Theory of Labor Exploitation Through Gender and

Ethnicity Division; Part I, Gender," presented at American
Economic Association Annual Meetings, December, 1984.

11. Becker, "A Theory of Marriage", op. cit.

12. Sawhill, op. cit., p. 131

 

13. Isabel Sawhill, Gerald Peabody, Carol Jones, and
Steven Caldwell, Income Transfers and Family Structure,

 

(Washington, D.C., 1975).

14. Larry Bumpass and James Sweet, "Differentials in
Marital Instability: 1970." , American Sociological Review,
n.37, (1972), p. 754.

15. Sex, Discrimination, and the Division g: Labor,
edited by Cynthia Lloyd (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1975).

16. Ibid.

139

140

17. Ibid.

18. Robert T. Michael, "Education and Derived Demand
for Children," in Economics pi ipp Family: Marriage,
Chiidreny and Human Capital, edited by Theodore W. Schultz
(Chicago, 1974).

 

 

19. Economics pi the Family: Marriage, Children, and
Human Capital, edited by Theodore W. Schultz (Chicago,
1974).

 

20. Becker, A Treatise, op.cit., p. 24.

 

 

21. Economics pi the Family, 0 .cit.
22. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The

 

Degradation pi Work ip the Twentieth Century, (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1974). .

23. Lloyd and Niemi, o .cit.

24. Jane Humphries, "Class Struggle and the
Persistence of the Working Class Family," Cambridge Journal
pi Economics, vol.7, (1977).

25. This analysis can of course be extended to the
class of capitalists also. Humphries emphasizes the family
in the case of the working class because she thinks that the
institution of the family is one of the important
instruments of struggle available to the working class.

26. In this instance the liberal neoclassicist could
be considered closer to the Marxist than to the conservative
neoclassicist. The fundamental difference between the
liberals and the Marxists, however, is that the Marxists in
general believe that the overthrow of capitalism is at least
a necessary condition for the complete elimination of this
injustice, while liberals believe that government
intervention in the capitalist economy is the solution.

Another apparent point of intersection between the
liberal neoclassicist and the Marxists, an intersection that
distinguishes them both from the conservative
neoclassicists, is the lack of any criticism of government
bureaucracy in either tradition.

27. Engels, The Origins, op. cit., p. 57.
28. Becker, A Treatise, op. cit., p. 24.

29. Marx and Engels, German Ideology, op. cit., p.9.

141

30. In The Origins, Engels tended to naturalise the
division of labor especially when referring to early forms,
but he was clearly more interested in the economic and
social determinants of social inequality.

31. For example, in the clothing or electronic
industries.

32. Braverman, op. cit.

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