In her famous book "Women's Oppression Today", Michele Barrett tries to understand two things : how far is capitalism

inherent to female subjugation, and to what extent is a socialist revolution capable of correcting the problem. Michele Barrett outlines some of the central problems facing any attempt to forge a coalition of Marxist and Feminist perspectives. She doesn't find female subjugation intrinsic to capitalism, neither does she think that a socialist revolution ensures equality of sexes. The first chapter, titled " Some Conceptual Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis", serves as an introduction in which Barrett lays down her principal arguments which she develops later. She criticizes the dominant Marxist approaches to the gender problem by analyzing three key terms: patriarchy, reproduction and ideology in order to understand why a Marxist understanding of the gender problem is inadequate and problematic. She starts by stating that Marxism and feminism cannot form a convenient combination because they are concerned with different things. While Marxism deals with economic exploitation and labor and capital, feminism deals with gender relations. The possible Marxist feminist approach can be one which tries to locate the relationship between gender relations and systems of reproduction, but despite the several attempts made in this direction a satisfactory explainantion is yet to appear. According to Barrett, gender divisions of labour is a pre-capitalist move which a socialist revolution is unlikely to abolish. Like Juliet Mitchel, she stresses on historicizing and contextualizing the problem in order to develop a desired theoritical network. In order to point out the shortcomings of the dominant perspectives, she proceeds to give an account of the different uses of three crucial terms that are considered to be important in understanding the nature, cause and mechanism of gender inequality: patriarchy, reproduction and ideology. "Patriarchy" as understood by radical feminists,

"Reproduction" as explained by Althusser, and "Ideology" as debated by marxist feminists to be a site of women's oppression. She starts with patriarchy. There has always been a confusion about defining patriarchy: whether to consider it as the rule of the father or male dominance. Radical Feminists like Kate Millet, Chriatine Delphy and Shulasmith Firestone establish patriarchy as an universal and transhistorical system of dominance outside any class relations altogether. Only two classes exist: men and women, in which the former appropriates the (re) productive labor of the latter. They consider biological division of sexes to be the basis of female subjugation without explaining how men established control over women's fertility. Moreover, such biological reductionism seems to hold social arrangements to be naturally given and hence stop any possibilities to ask for change and admit to the existance of natural feminine and masculine characteristics. Glorification of "femininity" can lead to the demand for separation of male and female spheres which nullifies one of the early triumphs of feminist analysis, namely a "distinction between sex as a biological category and gender as a social one"; as formulated by Simone de Beauvoir in her "The Second Sex". The problem of such an ahistorical approach is that it is blind to the fact that patriarchy cannot be understood fully within the scope of any particular system of production. Neither is a strict economic approach feasible.Equating patriarchy with capitalism is a flawed perspective. Materialist scholars like Risin McDonough and Rachel Harrison treat women as a separate class altogether, but at the same time opine that the level of patriarchal oppression each woman will face is dependant on her social class. It is an extremely confused cyclical argument which first assigns a different class status to women altogether and then seeks to differentiate them according to the social classes to

which they belong. Neither do they state how capitalism is inherent to the effectivity of patriarchy. When we come to the interpretation of patriarchy as the rule of the father, there lies a similar confusion. While family is admitted to be a crucial site of oppression and a fundamental unit in perpetrating the dominant production relations, it is stressed that the psychic and economic mechanisms of the family are independent from productive relations. It is a materialistic viewpoint, which equates patriarchy with the appropriation of the wife's labour by the husband as patriarchy and tends to reject psychoanalytic formulations. Thus what we see that patriarchy as a word is difficult to define, though its operations are well understood. The next concept she deals with is reproduction. Barrett does not stick to the biological aspect of it, drawing on Althusser's arguments in "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus" she points out that reproduction also includes the re-production of the conditions of production and that of labor force. In all, women play a crucial role: as the childbearer, the unpaid domestic laborer and the agent of socialization. However such an argument poses two problems: of collapsing into functionalism, and of relating all three of them to the system of production. It often forgets that a woman is also a wage laborer often, hence it is difficult to classify labor as purely domestic or work-related. Another trend that seeks to exclude bourgeoise women from the category of being oppressed places private domestic labor outside social production altogether. All formulations are based on the assumption that there was no sexula division of labour prior to capitalism. Its idea of labor includes the unpaid labor of the housewife and the low wage labor of the working class as a whole that is the result of only capitalism. Barrett points out the problems of reductionist and functionalist approahes that assumes everything has a pre-assigned function to it; and once that "original" function is

discovered, there is no need to enquire how the process has actually evolved, and rules out any chances of recognizing any different purposes it serves in the present. Such transhistorical and universal approaches refuse to understand differences and chart its method of working taking into account the various historical processes that have led to their present form. Hence, this idea of a "conspiracy" to subjugate a certain class entails women(or any other exploited section) to be passive victims instead of active agents. Barrett is against the narrow economism of Marxism, which supposes that women's oppression is solely a consequence of capitalism. No explainations are offered to justify this statement, but an invisible link is assumed and asserted. It does not take into account other forms of production where male dominance is always present. By conflating women's role in biological propagation and re-production of social relations, it fails to answer why only women should be assigned such roles. The problem with Marxism is it refuses to recognize gender oppression unless women are a part of the working class, and moreover, it sees women's oppression as mere ideological effect of capitalist relations that can be done away with once the relations of productions are changed. Hence, critics like Lucy Bland, et al have argued that women's role in the maintainance and reproduction of labor force cannot be understood in terms of biology or materialism alone. We have to take ideology into account, which articulates the sexual division of labor in specific historical context by enforcing the ideas of motherhood, femininity, romantic love, chastity, etc. Strict division between the base and superstructure is neither feasible nor useful in understanding the cause of women's oppression. Yet ideology alone cannot explain the nature of female subjugation. Certain aspects like familial relations, femininity, etc can be explained through ideology while other aspects like reproduction of labor force etc can be understood through materialism. We have to

enquire whether women belong to a different class altogether or that the location of women in different classes affect different kinds of oppression. The most vital point in Barrett's discussion is her argument on ideology as a crucial site of women's subjugation. She starts off by drawing on Althusser's formulation of ideology, where he rejects that ideology is simply a mechanical reflection of the economic base. He says that ideology is relatively autonomous of economic relations: he defines it as the imaginary relationship that the individual forges with the real conditions of existance. This formulation has been a radical move from strict economism, and feminists have prioritized ideology as something which can more adequately accommodate questions of gender relations that seem to be quite independent of social relations.while this has given us a space to rethink psychoanalytic theory, recognize social constructions of gender roles and prioritize gender oppression as an important thing which has been relegated to the sidelines by Marxism, it tends to collapse everything as an ideological effect. Therefore, Barrett says, we have historicize things, and overcome the universalist approach. Moreover, ideology should not be privileged over economism as some critics like Rosalind Coward, Cutler, et al so. Rejection the "real" ventures to situate reality as exterior to discourse whereas we cannot appropriate any reality without discourse. But simply privileging this "discourse" that makes knowledge does not help us. Hoever, this rejection of the real is a definite breal from both Marx and Althusser since Marxism is a realist science, which assumes there is a given reality which can be studied and analyzed. Rejecting Reductionism, biologism, economism, etc, Barrett stresses that historical understanding is important that takes into account all such factors and tries to understand how existing relations and processes have evolved. She agrees with Roy

bhaskar who opines that through their conscious actions, human beings often unconsciously reproduce and transform the structures that govern the system of production. For Barrett, definition of the concepts are crucial, and ideally such definitions should be explainatory rather than descriptive. Marxist feminists need to formulate new theories that will be more helpful in the propagation and understanding of their objectives. Simply "prioritizing gender division" as some recent Marxist approaches claim to do, won't facilitate a convenient marriage between Marxism and feminism. I have already mentioned that Barrett does not agree that a socialist revolution can ensure women's liberation. In fact, she believes that certain important changes can be obtained under capitalism. She proposes that the link between ideology and economy should be recognized and understood, and a close look at the changing structure of the family, its household organization and domestic ideology, etc. should be taken into account. Like Althusser, she thinks that an understanding of the mechanisms of the State ideological apparatus is necessary. Materialism and ideology separately cannot explain gender inequalities. We also have to see how genders are represented and constructed. However, one major problem with Barrett is that she believes that the ideal political imperative should stem from the "experience of oppression". This is an essentialist and universalist argument. Barrett believes that feminism should maintain its distinct character from the socialist movement yet cannot formulate how an allaince between Marxism and feminism is feasible since salvation of women is impossible under capitalism. She has been criticized by critics like Johanna Brenner and Maria Ramas for prioritizing ideology, who opine that biological facts of reproduction determine sexual division of labor. Barrett revised her arguments later, but even here, she should be

praised for attempting to clear the confusion surrounding the three crucial terms, and bringing ideology into account without which, women's oppression cannot be understood fully.