Thanks for this Maureen,
>>> Maureen Therese Anderson <manders at midway.uchicago.edu> 12/01/99 05:49AM >>>
btw, Charles, a related point. In another thread you proposed that as long as there's no male supremacy there's nothing wrong with a div of labor between productive-men and reproductive-women. I'd be careful about going too far with that one. Or put differently, I'd be careful about how difficult it would ever be to realize that "as long as." Women's association with biological reproduction and child-rearing (which is all about _social_ production and reproduction, but of course that's downplayed) associates them more with the domestic sphere and "intra"-group relations. That becomes their specialized domain. Meanwhile men become more associated with intergroup-relations and the "public" sphere. That becomes their relative specialty.
There seems to be a symbolic assymetry built into that dynamic, one which precludes the kind of separate-but-equal you were speculating on--an assymetry that disadvatages the ones less involved in the "higher" levels of social organization. By higher level I don't mean morally higher (lots of capitalist ideology of course posits the domestic sphere as the morally pure realm and sanctifies its women), but higher in the sense of involvement in higher levels of encompassment of the whole social formation (of which "domestic" units form parts). From the point of view of the extra-domestic level, the domestic level is the "marked" one, and the public, "inter-group" level the proverbial "unmarked" one. And this seems to be the case in both class and non-class societies. So while we should of course be struggling to show all the hard energies that go into women's work in the domestic sphere, we should bear in mind that as long as women are more confined to the domestic sphere, the basic assymetry will probably remain. ((((((((((((((((
Charles: Yes, I agree. I wouldn't propose that the ancient division of labor be perpetuated. Men should be socialized to do equal caring and domestic labor today. I'm not quite trusting of human made technology for men to get pregnant , yet, especially under a capitalist regime. So, the pregnancy/non-pregnancy asymetry may be a point at which the equivalence of dialectical opposites still applies. Also, perhaps the personal will become more political and public child rearing may become the custom, the whole village raising a child and all that.
CB