Socialist feminists, therefore, see that only the ending of capitalism and the liberation of women from its shackles, both ideological and institutional, can end the oppression of women.
ome socialist feminists believe that class is so important in forming attitudes that it cuts women off from their fellow women in other, opposing classes. Middle-class women have more in common with each other and their fellow middle-class men than they have with their working-class sisters.
Women play a key role in capitalism, serving its interests in several ways. Women in the labour force increase productivity, weaken the wage bargaining powers of male labour, and enter or leave the labour market in times of capitalist ‘boom’ or ‘bust’. They are vital in producing, raising and socialising the next generation of workers into the values of the system.
Socialist feminists such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman have envisaged socialist societies as revolving around alternative living arrangements whereby childcare would not be the concern of individual mothers. Instead, a more communal basis of living was imagined, with couples living alongside other couples, and perhaps also single people, allowing the responsibility of housework to be shared and companionship to be enjoyed by all.
