Happy International Working Women's Day?

 Femicide

In recognition of International Working Women's Day, I thought I'd look at the cheery topic of femicide – the specific targeting of females called 'gender-related killings.' You know, the topic of every detective show you're watching. The U.N. & World Population data are all over the place. Some data is missing, like China or incomplete, like India or old, as far back as 2012, and much is unreported. It is also not clear the role of warfare in the numbers. In 2022 the data reflected a world-wide increase in 'domestic partner' homicides – i.e. by a family member known to the victim. This is the largest subset of murders of females, at 48.8K in 2022, which is about 55% of the total. This means the majority of killings of girls and women was in the home and not by a stranger.

The largest increase was in Africa. There were reductions in some countries, increases in others. The Central African Republic at 10.6 per 100,000 as of 2016; South Africa at 9.0 in 2019 and El Salvador, at 13.8 per 100,000, were some of the highest. The U.S. is at 2.91 in 2021; Russia at 3.3; India at 2.5; Mexico at 6.2. The lowest – at .1 or .2 - were countries like Singapore, Bahrain, Oman, Tajikistan, Belgium and Japan.  Some countries had zero. The 'pattern' underlying the data is unclear. The U.N. has no idea what is behind this wide-spread level of attacks on women and girls but the concepts of the 'patriarchy,' the class system, racism and caste, conservative religion and profiting off women's labor might help to explain women's secondary place in the social structure.

Child Care

It's no secret that child care costs are rising across the U.S. The U.S. Census reports that child care costs range from $5,357 in small 'counties' to $17,171 in large 'counties,' between 8% & 19.3% of income. HHS estimated by a survey in 2024 that families spend an average of 24% on childcare. These figures don't quite match, do they? At any rate, Yahoo Business estimates the value of 'the market' at $59.87B in 2023 and is expected to grow to a $88.2B 'market' in 2033. 23% of children under 5 live in families below the poverty-line in the U.S. The Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that $9,193 is the average cost of child-care or 17% of income. What is clear from these exorbitant costs is that the U.S. needs free or cheap socialized daycare, better family paid-leave policies and shorter hours, not just inadequate payments through AFDC, Head Start, tax write-offs or relying on aging grandmas and grandpas. 27.1% of families rely on child care, while another source, the NAFCC, cites 40%. I'm not sure if they include after-school or park programs in this data, though those are for older children. Pandemic aid is ending and many childcare centers are closing as a result.  This situation impacts women the most, as they are the majority of unpaid caretakers of small children, in the home and out.  It is time for socialized child centers at worksites or in the community.

Femicide memorial in Mexico City 3/8/24

Barbie

As someone whose experience of Barbie was as an oddly-sculpted, too pink, plastic thing with tiny clothes that rip and way too many possessions, an attempt to craft her into a feminist icon was flawed from the get-go. Barbie the movie is a mass-market exercise in girl-boss feminism. Any 'moral' about how oppression is ultimately bad is lost in the cartoon firmament of Barbieland itself – the cars, the houses, the color, the perfection, the girls. The film is the flip-side of a macho film shot in a dirty male locker-room, but instead it's a place where men are homeless, everything is artificial and every woman is almost identical, housed and happy. The airhead men, led by a buff Ken, go macho like an infantile version of Susan Faludi's 'Backlash' and attempt to conquer the professional Barbies, but they thankfully fail. Like Arwen from LoTR, this Barbie eventually chooses reality over being a Mattel doll, or in Arwen's case, an Elf that never dies. This sends Barbie, now called Barbara, off to the gynecologist, which is about the funniest scene in the movie. Welcome to reality, which is the only solid point it makes.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  "FGM, “Socialist Feminism and the New Women's Movement,” “Feminists and Feminists,” Fortunes of Feminism” (Fraser); “Red Valkyries” (Ghodsee); “Weird Conservative Feminism,” “Freedom Socialist,” “Queen's Gambit,” “Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again,” Marxism and the Oppression of Women” (Vogel); “Without Apology,” "Miss Sloane."

More Cheery News on FGM:  https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/08/dramatic-rise-in-women-and-girls-being-cut-new-fgm-data-reveals

May Day Books has many magazines, books and pamphlets on feminist issues from a left point of view.

The Cultural Marxist

March 8, 2024 - Happy International Working Women's Day! The holiday originally brought to you by the 2^nd Socialist International in 1910, Clara Zetkin presiding.