Action Alert | Redefining Liberation in Women’s Labor: Building Inclusive, Nuanced, and Intersectional Feminist Movements
At its core, feminism is about equality for all genders, yet this broader theory manifests itself in many different ways. In the late 19th century came first-wave feminism resulting in recognizing women as people rather than property. In the 1960s and 70s came second-wave feminism with three distinct types of feminism. First was cultural feminism, stating that there was a “female essence” set women apart from men. The second was mainstream or liberal feminism, which focused on men and women having equal opportunities within the existing society. The third was radical feminism, calling for a complete overhaul of the current patriarchal society as the only path to liberation for women. In the 1980s came the third wave of feminism, which introduced race and class as central to conversations about women’s liberation through concepts such as Kimberle Crenshaw’s “intersectionality,” explaining how various forms of oppression compound and intersect.
To make sure our advocacy is inclusive, we must recognize feminism’s history of exclusion of women of color. For example, liberal feminism’s focus on the work environment, particularly in terms of equal pay, better work conditions, and ending sex segregation and discrimination within the workplace, is essential but does not consider the different relationships that women of color, particularly Black women, have to labor as opposed to white women.
For generations, Black labor was never a choice; instead, it was something that was violently extracted. During four centuries of enslavement, this labor was done on the plantation, yet even post-enslavement, Black women’s labor continued. After the Civil War and during the Jim Crow era, Black women were forced back into white families' homes to provide services for them. Their wage labor became the primary source of income for their families, leaving their children at home while working as domestic servants or laundresses in white homes.
Indigenous women experienced a similar history of labor extraction. Contrary to how we were taught history, Black people were not the only ones enslaved. Bondage for Indigenous folks was much harder to classify, taking on the form of convict leasing, child servitude, captive trading, and more - working on remote frontiers rather than plantations.
More recently, for migrants, immigrants, and refugee women, labor is similarly extracted through such social atrocities as human trafficking. Human trafficking exists as a form of modern-day slavery. This labor exploitation involves women, men, and children forced to labor through force, fraud, or coercion. Because of their vulnerable positions as non-residents, these women often experience precarious situations where they are threatened with being sent back to their home countries or other lousy living conditions to continue to extract labor from them.
Aside from race, class plays a vital role in one’s relationship to labor, as people must work to support themselves when they lack resources. Poor white women experience labor differently - seeing work as a means of economic freedom from oppressive home environments. The inability to access the same cheap labor of women of color that rich white women have the money to afford, poor and lower-income white women were historically left to balance work outside the home and expectations around child-rearing and duties in the home.
For wealthy white women particularly, labor has not manifested as an oppressive burden that has been extracted, rather it was experienced as an opportunity and a path to individualized liberation. While anti-woman sentiments for Black women, Indigenous women, and other women of color mean hyper-masculinization and the sexualized expectation of labor, it conversely paints white women as the fragile “damsel in distress” who should stay at home and take care of the kids. Because of this sentiment about their sexuality and physicality, white liberal feminists viewed work as the key to gender equality, allowing them to be in and work in the same environments as men, demanding their status as equals. Patriarchy as the enemy is the resounding cry for many historic and contemporary liberal feminist movements, from the Suffragettes to the contemporary (and insensitive) leveraging of the Handmaids Tale in response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade. This centralizing force of liberal white feminism denies the violence and racialized struggle that Black, Indigenous, and other groups of women of color have historically experienced.
When we envision and reimagine the “liberation of women,” we are conditioned to empathize with white-collar professional women who need help at home. Discussions about more female representation in the corporate world, however, fall short because, for many women, the corporate world is not even accessible. Somehow, white-collar professionals are the only women worth liberating or that through osmosis, their liberation will bring about the liberation of all women. This viewpoint works on inclusion within an oppressive society rather than liberating everyone (even men) from it. This inclusion is only accessible to women willing to make themselves palatable to a patriarchal society, ascending in the workplace and breaking glass ceilings while leaving women at the margins behind to be exploited. The difference in working conditions implicates understanding of what liberation means for women. For women with privilege, liberation is about inclusion into a patriarchal society. This includes rhetoric such as “breaking the glass ceiling” and the idea that if women are the exact equals of men, then we will indeed be free.
When we take an intersectional feminist approach to women’s liberation, we see that more than gender prevents women from inclusion in the workplace. Other factors such as race, class, ability, religion, and education level, greatly complicate the relationship that non-white women have with the patriarchy. This complexity makes it difficult for women without privileges or patriarchal alignment to be genuinely included in the workplace and thus seek their liberation through labor. For many women at the margins, their work was never voluntary, and their labor could never be a statement of freedom because race and other intersectional barriers further complicated their access to equal opportunities in the first place.
I want to reframe my thinking. How do I become a better feminist ally?
Everyone has some form of privilege, which means that everyone can be an ally. Here are three quick and actionable tips for your feminist allyship:
Raise Your Awareness. Make sure that you are cognizant of the history of labor and what that means for different communities, especially women of color.
Solidarity And Allyship Are Actions (not words). In the workplace, make sure that you show solidarity and allyship - stand up for your fellow women if you feel like they are being overshadowed or underappreciated for their work.
Pass The Mic. If you experience privilege of any kind, utilize that privilege to uplift (not speak for) the women around you.
Redefining women’s liberation outside of labor and building more inclusive, nuanced, and three-dimensional goals for women’s empowerment will take time. The first step is challenging the belief that equality in labor will bring about the total liberation of women.
This post was written by GenderAvenger Harvard IOP Summer Intern Eden Getahun. Learn more about Eden and her passion for gender equality and healthcare here.
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📣🚨 Redefining liberation outside of labor and building more inclusive, nuanced, and three-dimensional goals for women’s empowerment will take time. Our Harvard IOP Intern Eden Getahun provides a historical #intersectional take with tips on how to move forward. #GenderAvenger