Marxism is not enough

Nash, June and Helen Icken Safa. "A Decade of Research on Women in Latin America". Pp. 3-21. Women and Change in Latin America. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1986.

The authors indicate the lack of interest, and therefore data about women's contribution to economic, political and social life (3) in Marxist predominated analyses. Buenos Aires 1974 is seen as a benchmark of the efforts to put together ehtnographic research that deals with the ways women are involved in modes of production. Some studies at this point showed the segmentation of the work force by gender and ethnicity; especially regarding the fact that women are concentrated in the non-market areas of economy, which is frequently overlooked by researchers, or even rendered invisible by assumptions of male-headed households and of paid work as equivalent of work. The authors also note that the first feminist Marxist analyses by de Beauvoir and others departed from the universality of women's oppression, but since the 70's and 80's this premise has been challenged by a growing scholarship that questions biological determinism and calls for an analysis focused on gender relations within specific historical formations. They finally reflect about the need to adopt a dialectical analysis that avoids any kind of economic determinism and explore the links between consciousness, culture and material conditions (15).

Comments

  1. JonJuly 30, 2009 at 11:48 AM

    A similar question to my previous one about Nash... Do you think she's saying that Marxism is necessary but insufficient, or asking us to turn from Marxism altogether?

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  2. Manuela Valle-CastroJuly 30, 2009 at 11:07 PM

    I think that Nash and Safa are saying Marxism and development theories are necessary to understand and critique narratives of modernization, development, and progress in Latin America, which frequently equate progress with capitalist development. But they are calling on Marxists and theorists of development not to take the female subordination within the household as a given fact.

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