Working Women and Feminism: Final Thoughts and Frustrations

Much to my surprise and sadness, this will be my last (scheduled) solo post for the semester. I’m still not sure where the time went, but between classes and life happening, this semester flew by. I still have a slew of working women I want to tell of you readers about (perhaps a continuation of the feature next semester?) and so many more things I want to say.

But today, I want to try and sum up things I have learned and thoughts I have developed over this semester. I have changed greatly as a feminist in the last year, and have had a great deal of inner torment over that. Because I have a full-time job unlike the majority of my peers, I often feel that my concerns as an activist and a feminist don’t always coincide with theirs. And, as harsh as this might sound, sometimes I get deeply angry when I hear feminists with class privilege talk about how they fight for low income women.

They are a product of a system which has inherently oppressed me and others of the “labor” class and continue to benefit from it. Because they do not have to work, it’s easy for them to go to protests, participate in clubs, and be “good” activists. Feminists with class privilege have the opportunity to get summer internships (the majority of which are unpaid or don’t pay enough to cover relocation fees and maintain rent payments back home). Sometimes I feel like a bad feminist because it’s so hard for me to get involved with activities beyond work and my classes.

Okay, I realize I probably sound really resentful and whiny right now. “Woe is me that I have to work hard and get an education, boo hoo.” But I think the issue of classism within the feminist movement, within leftist movements in general, is something that desperately needs to be discussed. Like many women of color who got sick and tired of white women trying to speak for them, working class women are sick and tired of their middle and upper class peers trying to make them into a charity case. Women like myself struggle to find our voice within this movement.

As discussed in a recent article from thefword.org, even women who agree with the inherent goals of feminism feel it has turned a direction that excludes working women. One women interviewed in the article remarked,

When I was a child the unions were strong, my mother was a working-class woman and she related to feminism in a practical way. She didn’t need the right words, or to be well-versed. She saw it as female workers standing up to the male bosses who owned the factory. Now, unions are weaker and feminism has become increasingly academic, meaning you have to be educated to be taken seriously. Put that together and you’ll get a lot of working-class females out there who feel they have no voice.

Issues that may be important to feminism, like the politics of language, seem very abstract to working-class girls in Lincoln. It’s not real to them, the ideologies and analysis that are priceless to middle-class women aren’t practical to them.

The article goes on to describe how feminism’s push toward academia has been incredibly detrimental to it’s alliance with the working class. Even young women who do managed to attend universities feel at odds with their peers because they don’t always use the elevated language of the upper class. The author attributes this to the “books as bombs” model developed in the 1960s. “Feminist ideas circulated in the 1960s and 1970s through books… ever since, this book-as-bomb model has come to stand for the progress of feminism in general.”

Continuing to use this method of distributing deeper knowledge of feminist theory and practice makes it less and less accessible to working class women.

Again, a primary point of access excludes women who have little time or energy to read due to working hours or child care. The books circulating among UK feminists are also likely to pass over those who are illiterate, or refugee and immigrant women in the UK who speak little English. It doesn’t engage the many who were failed by the education system and lack faith in their reading abilities.

This is a sentiment I have come across countless times in my readings for this semester. Women who work all day then have to come home to clean and take care of children don’t exactly have the energy or desire to read bell hooks or Betty Friedan. And while blogs like ShoutOut! do help to make things more accessible for working women, they can only do so much. Some women even argue that the constant critique of media in all forms can be exasperating, because sometimes all you want to do after a double shift on your feet is go home and watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians until you pass out with a half-eaten bowl of cereal still in your lap, without thinking about how damaging it is for women. And yes, I am speaking from personal experience.

Even feminist conferences that sell t-shirts that say “Feminism is for Everybody” manage to exclude lower class women. When events like this cost upwards of a $100 (more than a days pay when you make minimum wage) to attend, it’s no wonder that so many women are hesitant to embrace the feminist label. How can we learn more about this amazing movement and encourage others to join when it continues to make itself so inaccessible? Shouldn’t we be focused on more practical concerns, like ensuring fair treatment at work and getting everyone a living wage, and helping working mothers get the help they need, instead of, as a friend put it, “calling a manhole cover a ‘personhole cover?'”

So that’s where I am with feminism right now. Frustrated but still really hopeful. I think our movement has so much to offer the world and can do so much more than it already has. But we have so many mistakes we need to learn from first. We have to bring class further into our discussions of intersectionality if we are ever going to push further for women’s rights. Working women make up a huge part of this country, and they do vote, and they want to take action. We just have to show that you can be a legitimate political actor while working the second shift in addition to the double you just pulled at your job.