Gender, Class, and Capital: A Critical Examination of Feminism and Marxism

Abstract

  

Alison M. Jaggar in her definition states that “Marxism is a theory of development of class society, of the accumulation process in capitalist societies, of the reproduction of class dominance and of the development of contradictions and class struggle” (173). Therefore it can be affirmed that Marxism has always been centered upon class and economic structure prevalent in the society where people are distinguished in accordance to the work they execute and thus is described as “gender blind” by Heidi Hartmann. If one tries to analyze this set up from a feminist point of view then it can be determined that Marxism works in the interest of patriarchal structure, obscuring its baseless working through which they administer women. Therefore many critics have been struggling to deal with what Michele Barrett identify as the “woman’s question” in Marxism taking into account production, ideology, labor, class consciousness etc. through which they rebel against Marxist tendencies of dropping gender relations to just labor relations.