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Feminism and class politics today

BRITISH feminist Michele Barrett asks: “To what extent are we justified in regarding the oppression of women as an ideological process?” 

In Women’s Oppression Today (1980), Barrett argues that gender divisions in society are not an essential element of capitalist modes of production.

Her view is that divisions of sex — what she terms “gender” — preceded the capitalist mode of production and, as capitalism developed, it adapted and used this existing division between men and women to further entrench material alienation.

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