Aff - Feminist Marxism 1AC - Michigan 7 2023 KLAB

The patriarchy that dominated the economy stemmed from the layout of the nuclear family in which men treated their wives like their employees. The intrinsic and structural inequities seen in modern day economy between men and women are not just evident in the failure for the USFG to pass policy recognizing women as equal to their coworkers but rather can be indemnified throughout many different aspects of women’s lives. The only way to restructure the systems that capitalize and exploit the bodies and work of women is to disengage from the system all together.
Roberts 14 (Adrienne Roberts is a senior lecture at the University of Manchester for the department of politics and specializes in feminist international political economy that focused on gendered relations of finance) “Gender, Financial Deepening and the Production of Embodied Finance: Towards a Critical Feminist Annalist https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2014.975189. DOA 7/10/23/RAN
A third theoretical entry point is opened up by several recent theoretical analyses of the differential production of bodies. From a historical materialist perspective, the key point here is that insofar as “part of what the creative history of capitalism has been about is discovering new ways (and potentialities) in which the human body can be put to use as the bearer of the capacity to labour”, bodies nonetheless bear markers of difference that differentiate the value of their labour. As David Harvey explains, the differentiation of bodies takes place as they are “marked by different physical productive capacities and qualities according to history, geography, culture, and tradition”, reducing the markers of race, ethnicity, age and gender to perceptions of what particular kind of labour people are able to do. To view this through a feminist lens, however, again draws attention to the specific ways in which the socially and historically constructed valuation of one's reproductive capacities also produces difference along these lines. This is precisely the point made by feminist geographers, who have convincingly argued that the globalising tendencies of capitalism have not led to a simple convergence of experiences but rather to the creation of various continuities and disjunctures, including in the production of gender subjectivities and bodies. Finance plays an important role here, as documented by Katherine Rankin's comparison of the differential production of the “financial subjectivities” of racialised subprime borrowers in the US and feminised microfinance borrowers in the Global South. She shows that while both the subprime and the microcredit markets aim to serve ostensibly poor and underserved borrowers, the former constructs the borrower as “poor, implicitly racialised and incapable of self-care”. In contrast, the “operative subjectivity” of the latter is that of “rational economic woman” who invests wisely, manages debt responsibly and is ultimately capable of ensuring the reproduction of “poverty finance”. While Rankin's work emphasises the production of subjectivities rather than embodied subjects, the two are clearly interlinked. Applying this lens to the TBF agendas brings to light an interesting tension between processes of equalisation and differentiation. That is, the forms of commodification and financial deepening that are promoted by TBF have an equalising effect as more and more women and aspects of production/social reproduction are integrated into the global market and its tendencies towards abstraction. However, on the other hand, they also entail active processes of differentiation. This occurs, for instance, as certain groups of women are ascribed the operative subjectivity of Rankin's “rational economic woman” and “empowered” to engage in various forms of entrepreneurial labour (with all of its attendant embodied effects). However, these same TBF projects, particularly the “womenomics” projects that will be outlined below, mobilise a discourse that erases bodies, as bearers of markers and symbols, from the operation of financial markets. The move towards standardised credit rating and risk assessment models is particularly indicative of the analytical erasure of bodies, as bearers of markers and symbols, from financial decision-making. This move, then, reproduces embodied forms of difference as the andocentrism of these models blinds them to the different conditions under which different groups of people engage in productive/reproductive labour, generally to the detriment of women, to certain racial and ethnic groups, and especially to racialised women.
Society has been structured to invalidate the history of women in the workplace and has currently excluded women from reaping the same benefits from social welfare as jobs that society has framed as masculinized.
Cookson 23
(Tara Patricia Cookson an assistant professor of Gender, Development and Global Public Policy at the University of British Colombia and confounded a feminist research collective that connects scholarship to activism) “Social protection system and Gender : A Review of the Evidence” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14680181231180507. DOA 7/10/2023/ RAN
While the relationship between women’s unpaid care work and female labour force participation is implicit in much of the above cited literature, the perspective that a social protection system oriented towards gender equality must account for both of these is sometimes more explicit. In Ecuador, the ‘women-as-carers’ model underpinning social assistance provision in the country may undercut women’s access to the labour market and more robust social security benefits associated with formal employment (Palacio Ludeño, 2019). Meanwhile, Rubery (2015) suggests that not enough has been done to connect the demand for social protection system reform from a gender perspective to an actual policy plan. In response, Rubery proposes a ‘multi-dimensional assessment framework’ to assess social protection and employment system reform by dually accounting for unpaid care and reproductive work and waged work, both of which she argues are ‘central to a gender equality agenda’ (Rubery, 2015: 520), lest employers be entirely relieved of the responsibility to account for reproduction. Within the perspective that approaches gender and social protection systems through a labour lens, there is also a focus on the gendered dynamics of informality, decent work, and the ‘future of work’. One study that we reviewed examines the role of labour unions in mobilizing around women domestic workers’ access to decent work in Bangladesh, including full access to the national social protection system, inclusive of contributory social security (Ghosh, 2021). The study found that the unions’ focus on national legislation and policy bore some fruit by enabling domestic workers to form collectives, and guaranteeing maternity leave for domestic workers, although implementation of these rights still lags. Others consider rising automation and gig work, finding that while many of the gendered challenges facing social protection systems aren’t novel or unique to ‘future of work’ trends, there is a real risk that these trends exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities, and as such, policymakers would do well to adapt social protection system design to reflect these (Bastagli and Hunt, 2020). The third main approach we identified suggests that social protection systems should align with human rights principles. Sepúlveda Carmona (2017) argues that the principles of equality and non-discrimination can be better utilized to overcome wide and persistent coverage gaps for women, including through application to various system components and mechanisms such as personal identification systems and targeting mechanisms. In South Africa, Matthews (2020) applies a human rights perspective to the conceptualization and implementation of the national social protection system as it interacts with labour policy. Focusing in particular on the concept of non-discrimination, the article finds that gendered and racial discrimination in the labour market perpetuates the exclusion of Black South African women from accessing social protection.
The structures that exist in in the nuclear family were carried over to the workforce and the financial sector. Thus men assume leadership roles within the workforce and receive higher wages. Women are often passed by on opportunities for leaderships roles because of devaluation of women’s skill set.
Facio 13’
(“What is Patriarchy” https://learnwhr.org/wp-content/uploads/D-Facio-What-is-Patriarchy.pdf).
By "patriarchal institutions", I refer to the set of mechanisms, practices, beliefs, myths and relationships organizing relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to the distribution of resources, the reproduction of individuals, and the type of societal structures within a given Patriarchy. These institutions are closely linked with one another, creating, maintaining and transmitting inequality from generation to generation. Most sociologists recognize as institutions such social structures as governments, the family, human languages, universities, hospitals, business corporations, and legal systems. I prefer to rename these recognized institutions with more appropriate names such as the Institution of Androcentric Law, the Institution of Misogynist Religion or of Sexist Language, of Malestream Media or Malecentered Science, etc. But I also like to make visible other institutions which patriarchal sociology does not recognize as such, like the Institution of Male Solidarity, of History with Capital H, of Erotic Violence, of Woman-Blaming Myths, of Maleheteronormativity, of Dichotomous Sexual Beings, etc. Many feminists, while not speaking of institutions per se, argue that Patriarchy exists not only in the family but in all structures that allow for control over women, their work and reproductive force. I call these structures patriarchal institutions, because aside from being mechanisms for the perpetuation of Patriarchy, they are also a set of beliefs, practices, myths, relationships, etc. which make sure that Patriarchy is invisible even to those women which suffer the most exclusion or at the most, make sure it is perceived as natural or simply as the way things are and always will be for women. I borrow the idea of the “Institution of Male Solidarity” from Celia Amorós, although she does not call it this and speaks instead of a brotherhood among men that takes place in the constitution of modern Patriarchy. The Costa Rican composer/singer Guadalupe Urbina refers to this institution as “the Knighthood of Mutual Praise”. Marcela Lagarde, Angela Miles, Carole Pateman and many other feminists also believe that men create interdependence and solidarity among themselves, which enables them to dominate women. This does not mean that there is no hierarchy among men. The "appropriation of women's reproductive force" and the control of their bodies and their sexuality comes from radical feminism. For example, Shulamith Firestone discusses how human reproduction, which happens in women's bodies, is legally appropriated and controlled by men and is used to benefit men or to keep women at the mercy of men. Lidia Falcón considers women as a social and economic class, insisting that it is the father and/or husband who enforce the appropriation. Many feminists, such as Maria Meis and others, have spoken of the productive relationship between husband and wife in the modern nuclear family, which is similar to the relationship between a supervisor and a subordinate in the workplace. This subordination occurs in the private space of family because whatever the husband’s produces enters the market (the privileged area of capitalist Patriarchy), while the wife´s production is not. In this way, all of the wife’s work in the non-privileged private space of the nuclear family is invisibilized .
Within the current economic structure of the United States, women have been pushed out from receiving higher wages and benefits that their male coworkers receive. Working within the system to rectify these inequalities and dethatch the patriarchy from the economy requires separation from the capitalist model. The states have recently proven to be in oppression to women’s rights with the recent overturning of Roe v Wade. This proves the status quo is rapidly deteriorating and needs radical movements to prevent the regression of our rights.
Women in the workplace have been sexuality expolited in the informal sector as a way to uphold the patricidal economy in which bodies in power abuse their masculinity in order to stay in power.
Roberts 14 (Adrienne Roberts is a senior lecture at the University of Manchester for the department of politics and specializes in feminist international political economy that focused on gendered relations of finance) “Gender, Financial Deepening and the Production of Embodied Finance: Towards a Critical Feminist Annalist https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2014.975189. DOA 7/10/23/RAN
Returning to the issue of the broader promotion of women's financial empowerment, a perspective of the body draws attention to the forms of gendered violence that have been shown to accompany particular forms of financial deepening and attendant collection techniques. Lamia Karim's recent study of Bangladesh is only one of a plethora of studies documenting the link between microcredit and increased violence against women in the household and in public (i.e. through flogging and other means). Violence and aggressive intimidation techniques have also been used by debt collectors against women in the US, who are seen as more likely to submit to aggressive tactics than men, not least because their caring obligations tend to render them less geographically mobile. Debt-related suicide has also been documented across the globe, in countries at a range of levels of economic development. While issues of financial empowerment are deeply intertwined with the promotion of entrepreneurship as an almost unambiguous good, this also fails to capture the specific conditions under which different groups of people engage in this form of work, which has a differential impact on the production of bodies. As Sébastien Rioux reminds us, “Marx was particularly attentive to the ways in which capital is inscribed on the bodies and in the flesh of laborers, documenting as he did how long hours of work, unregulated environment, and dangerous working conditions produced tired, diseased, maimed, unhealthy, overworked, stunted and injured bodies”. Although I cannot fully survey the conditions under which different entrepreneurs labour, it has been well documented by groups such as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor that women in the advanced OECD countries are much more likely to turn to entrepreneurship because of the earning potential it offers than women in the developing world who are more likely to engage in this work due to a lack of alternatives. World Bank research shows that while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of women entrepreneurs of any region, they tend to have smaller businesses (which are often concentrated in the so-called “informal” sector), to be self-employed rather than employ others, to be concentrated in low value-added businesses and to have a lower value of return than men. In terms of finance, this then suggests that the latter group of women are probably more likely to be borrowing to finance their immediate reproduction (as described by Federici above) than the former, where the link is less direct. They are also likely to work under difficult physical conditions. In one study of over 422 women street vendors in South Africa, for example, 54 per cent reported a work-related illness or injury. A significantly larger proportion of self-employed women reported illness or injuries, with 47 per cent reporting having received burns during their work, 12 per cent reporting cuts, 21 per cent reporting headaches and 11 per cent complaining of musculoskeletal problems. Approximately one in four women also reported some form of abuse while working, such as sexual harassment, physical abuse or robbery.
The structural inequality of the current capitalist economy has enforced domestic and sexual abuse against women by failing to address the patriarchy rooted in the economy.
Mazurana and McKay, 2001 - Research Director of Gender, Youth, and Community at Tufts Univ. and contributor to The Irish Times [Dyan and Susan “Women, Girls, and Structural Violence: A Global Analysis”, http://u.osu.edu/christie/files/2014/10/Chapter-11-Women-Girls-Structural-Violence-Mazurana-McKay-xu91z1.pdf TA]*** from backfile
The male bias inherent in (patriarchal) democracy has led to forms of patriarchal structural violence that relegate “women’s issues” to the “private” realm where they become “private matters” that the state does not address. This bias is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the issue of domestic violence, where male bias greatly impairs the ability of police, judges, and lawmakers from recognizing the violent behavior in the family. “The view that ‘as a family matter’ battery is less important, is based on men’s, not women’s perceptions” (Murray & O’Regan, 1991, p. 45). The multiple forms of domestic violence that women suffer have profound physical and psychological effects (Herman, 1992; Kelly, 1993), prompting international calls for domestic violence to be recognized as a form of torture (Copelon, 1994). Governmental support of patriarchal structural violence through its inattention to “private” matters is apparent throughout the world. Until 1991, the murder of a wife in Brazil was legal—it was considered an honor killing and was done to preserve the family’s honor because of a woman’s transgression. In many areas of the world, men are free to rape their wives with no threat of legal repercussions (Mertus, 1995). Other examples of government-sponsored patriarchal structural violence include laws and systems that condone particular forms of violence against women, deny women control over their bodies, provide no assistance with child care and maternity leave, make no attempt to remedy child support defaults, and fail to provide unemployment protection to women who work within the “private” realm in domestic service or farm work (Waring, 1988; Murray & O’Regan, 1991). Because governments rarely address patriarchal structural violence or fight for women’s rights, progress for women is largely made by women working for the recognition and enforcement of women’s rights. As a result, in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Britain, Columbia, India, Sri Lanka, and the United States, violence against women in the home has been identified and some forms of it criminalized (Fineman & Mykitiuk, 1994).
Thus Elizabeth and I affirm feminist adaption of Marxism that will demasculization the economy and give women the opportunities that the capital system has failed to deliver. Any reform within the capitalist system will not solve our impacts because they take a moderate path that does not address the root causes.
Armstrong 20’
(Armstrong is a professor of Gender and Women at Smith College and advocates for equality of women) https://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=swg_facpubs#:~:text=Socialist%20feminists%20sought%20to%20synthesize,interactive%20contributions%20towards%20women's%20oppression DOA: 07/17/23 RAN
Marxism historicized social reproduction as labor, arguing that it exists within the relations of capitalism. Behind every capitalist social relation - that of the capitalist and the worker - lay another buried social relation, that of the household – between husband and wife. In the newly privatized household, as a result of inherited gender roles, women did the bulk of all reproductive labor under the

Preview shortened. Download the file for the full document.