Most of us in the Left have heard the phrase ‘double exploitation’ to describe women under capitalism. One of the first to regularly use the term, though the concept obviously long predates it, was Margaret Cowl, here with an early example.

‘Women in Capitalist Countries Doubly Exploited’ by Margaret Cowl from The Daily Worker. Vol. 11 No. 174. July 21, 1934.

Economic Exploitation Is Basis of “Double Standard”–Fascism Oppresses and Degrades Women; Calls Them “Inferior”

ENTERTAIN your tired warriors!” is the instruction to the women of Germany by the fascist mouthpiece, Goebbels.

“…every spry lad willingly and gladly will make mothers of twenty girls, once we have overcome the unnatural prejudice, harmful to the nation, of the monogamous marriage,” are the words of the fascist Professor Bergmann of Leipzig!

This is the degradation to which Hitler fascism has brought the women of Germany.

But the women most affected by fascism are the women who work for a wage. “Women are unfit by nature to be competitors of men in the same occupations,” means that women shall accept lower wages than men for the same kind of work; it means the utilization of cheap labor power of women workers to keep down the wages of all workers. The agreement in the Muenster textile district provides that in case women are dismissed and men engaged in their place, the basic wage for women shall be the basic wage for men.

Economic Exploitation the Basis

This same principle of unequal wages for equal work for women workers prevails in every capitalist country and is the underlying cause for the double exploitation of the women workers. This special economic exploitation of the women workers is the source from which flows all the inequalities in marriage, the double standard, all the inequalities in other phases of life.

On it is based the old “master” right of the man. Under fascism this inequality in pay for the women workers is brazenly brought out, without any covering of any sort. But this also greatly helps in awakening the consciousness in the masses of women as to the real cause for their double burden, the class nature of capitalism. It helps to bring the women workers into the general revolutionary movement of the working class. In the attempt to keep women from joining the antifascist movement, German fascism is relegating women to the church, kitchen and children; attempting to wipe out the advance of centuries and plunge women back to dark medievalism.

Inequality in the United States

In the U.S.A. the unequal wage for equal work is somewhat covered up by the talk that women receive less wages because they are less productive in industry. It is true that the majority of women are unskilled workers, unskilled because capitalist America does not afford the greater majority of women workers the opportunity to become skilled. But the simplified mechanization in industry is bringing larger numbers of women into those trades where formerly skill was required. Thus the women are entering “men’s trades” at lower wages than those paid to men workers.

Only in the Soviet Union, where the profit-making system with its various forms of exploitation has been wiped away, where the criterion for complete equality is labor, are women receiving equal wages for equal work. Special schools are established in the factories to enable women to become skilled workers and thereby receive the same wages as the men.

In her book “Women Who Work” Grace Hutchins points out that on the average, wages of women in the U.S.A. are 41 per cent below those of men. The Roosevelt administration faithfully follows out this same principle of double exploitation of the women workers.

According to “Women Who Work,” a lower rate for women workers was adopted under the N.R.A. in “not far from a fourth of the codes,” according to a statement by the federal Women’s Bureau in January, 1934.

The most affected by this double exploitation of women in the U.S.A. are the Negro women workers. Their wages are even lower than the low wages of the white women workers.

Greater War Profits

With war preparations in full swing, this double exploitation of the women workers is being utilized by the war industries to make the cheapest war profits. In Women Who Work it is pointed out that already in the New Kensington, Pa., plants of the Aluminum Co. of America, where women were introduced into the plant and paid $1.45 a day in 1933 for work which men formerly received $5 a day. “This fact was brought out at the hearings in July, 1933, before the ‘Gallagher Commission’ appointed by the Pennsylvania legislature to investigate sweatshop conditions in the state.”

Competition among the munition makers for the cheapest bloodsoaked profits will intensify as never before. The lowest paid—the women workers —will become the prey of these vulture-exploiters more than ever before. This additional method of slashing the workers’ wages will be intensified.

All of this can be halted, provided not only the women workers but also the men workers, launch the bitterest fight against the unequal wage for equal work for women.

The trade unions should be particularly interested in carrying on this fight. It is of the utmost importance to connect up in a practical way the slogan, “Equal Pay for Equal Work,” with our anti-war and anti-fascist activities especially in those industries employing large numbers of women workers.

The slogan initiated by the Communist Party of the U.S.A. for the August First campaign—“Fascism Oppresses and Degrades Women—Capitalism Profits by the Miserably-paid Labor of Women at Home and the Murder of Men at the Front—Organize Factory and Neighborhood Women’s Committees Against War and Fascism,” should be popularized among the masses of women.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n174-jul-21-1934-DW-LOC.pdf