I took stock of what is happening today to women, short-term influences: how the economic crisis affects women (worse); long-term: how the capitalist system restricts the development of people in general.

Short-term influences

The present economic crisis demonstrates itself in three ways in particular: government policy of retrenchment, lower wages, increased unemployment.

Retrenchments

The rule of 1 per cent does not come up to the government retrenchments and I would like to explain again what this means. In the Netherlands we earn about 200 milliard guilders a year together: our national income. The government spends a little more than half of this on social benefits (unemployment act, national assistance etc.). A little less than half is spent by individuals. They get the money in the form of (net) wages and profits (after tax deductions). Each year we produce more and therefore the national income increases. The cake gets bigger and bigger, and the issue is: how we divide the extra part. The rule of 1 per cent tells us something of the growth in the collective sector: this year 55 per cent is spent by the government next year 56 per cent and the year after 57 per cent. In 1980 it will be 59 per cent. However, if we let things go as they go now, i.e. if we don't change the policy, the growth would be 62 per cent. The discrepancy is about 10 milliard guilders so that will have to be economized... the growth has to be curtailed.

Retrenchment of facilities affects women in three ways:

1. If the number of jobs in the collective sector is reduced, then it will be even more difficult for women to find work outside their homes, because 75 per cent of all working women work in this sector. In the medical sector 80 per cent of the employees are women; education is for the most part provided by women; all canteens, typing offices and cleaning services are "manned" by women. Welfare work is still dominated by women.
2. If the facilities are reduced, women will have to work even harder at home in order to undo this setback. Both in the collective sector and in families people have to be cared for: the working power has to be maintained. A few examples: if there are less hospital beds and the time spent in hospital is reduced, then mother will have to stay home even more often. If classes at school get bigger, mothers' participation will be very convenient. If schools do not give possibilities for the children to stay during the luncheon-hour, mother might as well forget her plans for a job. Also if there are less possibilities for recreation for men and children, women will be confronted with the effects.
   
   Reductions of collective facilities therefore means a shift from the collective sector to the household: it will make work for mothers and housewives more difficult. Women do not profit from an extension of the private sector at the expense of the public facilities and social benefits.
   
   
3. Less public facilities also means less facilities for women, whereas we have to make up such a great deal of leeway. The "moedermavvos" (higher elementary schools for women) are short of money. Local training centres are threatened, whereas it becomes increasingly clear that training of women in their own districts satisfies a great need.

Apart from public facilities, social benefits can be economized upon. A possible decrease of allowances (for instance by dissociating them from minimum wages) affects women, because they will get less money to get by with. But even worse perhaps, is the fact that social legislation assumes that women who are not wage-earners, have no right to a WWV-allowance (a kind of unemployment allowance). Graduated women have no right to a RWW-allowance (national assistance) if they are not wage-earners. Dismissed part-time working women have no right to an unemployment allowance if they refuse a full-time job. Besides many working women pay social contributions without using the benefits: either because they already had the right to them (sickness-allowances), or because they do not have the right to them (widow's pension, unemployment allowance in some cases).

So perhaps dissociation of benefits from minimum wages is less relevant for women than a revision of the entire social legislation, in view of its individualisation. A link between wages and labour is to the disadvantage of women as long as domestic labour and looking after children is not considered "work".

Low wages

At the moment there is talk about not compensating the increased prices. If these are not compensated, it will have two effects on women: they will have to get by with less. They may have more money, but the money is worth less. They will do all they can to undo the setback; they'll have to do more shopping for bargains etc. Often other family expenses cannot be economized upon: the rent, the car etc.

Unemployment

Unemployment among women is higher than among men and increases faster. Besides, the official number of unemployed women must be doubled if we include women who say they are housewives and therefore not unemployed, but who are trying to find a job. Is this caused by the recession? As we saw before, government retrenchments mean less work for women in particular. When no more personnel can be hired, it means that less women have work, because the labour turnover among women is greater than among men. Also women are often "forgotten" when promotion is concerned. When times are bad, competition between men and women is heavier. At this moment the campaign "Maiden wat een slechte tijden" (Bad times for women) launched by the trade union women is the only specific campaign for the retention of work for women...

Long term influences

The retrenchments, wages and unemployment issues are of course also long term ones. Therefore I would like to say something about: 1. What will happen to the collective sector. 2. How many people work here. 3. How high are the lowest wages. 4. What kind of work people do. 5. Can people control their lives.

At this point it is important to have a clear picture of how our society works. The rules I discern I shall try to clarify on the basis of the items mentioned above
How large is the collective sector?

As we saw, taking care of, "training" people and maintenance of working power is done both by the state and at home. Since the industrial revolution many tasks were removed form the homes and became part of the collective sector: education, health-care, recreation. However small children are still mainly tended to at home. Depending on the economic situation more or less women have work outside their homes and there are more or less facilities that make this possible. In fact, the economic system has two requirements for women: use their working power in paid services and also use it in the homes, in order to make it possible that others can work in paid services for 40 hours a week. In other words: it exercises direct or more indirect influence.

According to Marx the law of accumulation of capital is important. In some periods this accumulation requires the use of a lot of working power, whereas in the next period this money can be converted into machines. In their turn these machines make it possible to make more efficient use of working power, which would imply that less people are necessary. In my opinion reproduction of working power becomes more important in this case, because the work is duller and more intensive: the labour forces need more care and more education. Both men and women have little control over this (cyclic) process. They can of course go on strike but only when their labour is very much in demand, as was the case after the war in Netherlands and in England, at the beginning of industrialisation. Usually there are reasons not to go on strike: in the Netherlands the cold war mentality prevailed and in England there were too many people looking for jobs. Very often new sources of working power are then used: married women, foreign labourers. These groups of workers do not usually show much solidarity because they have other interests or think they have, after the boom these people as a rule become unemployed again, have part-time jobs or better still they just go home again. So they constitute a reserve labour force.

How many people have work?

We just saw that this is partly determined by the phase which accumulation of capital is in. So women should not just be glad that they can get (part-time) work, that they have the right to work, or they will continually be used and sent home again.

How high are wages?

The more people in one household work, the less an individual has to earn in order to preserve the old family income. During the industrial revolution more and more people worked for increasingly little money. In the U.S. the number of working people per family has risen from the beginning of this century to an average of 1.7 full-time workers per family, in this connection it become apparent that the lowest wages (for work mainly done by women) are insufficient for an individual to survive! It is assumed that these persons live in families! The situation in the Netherlands is that until recently teachers in nursery schools did not get minimum wages. So the right to minimum wages is also a vital demand.

What kind of work do people do?

The decrease in wages turns out to be a result of depreciation of tasks. According to Braverman depreciation takes place because industries become better organized which leads to still more limited specialised tasks. Also because of automation, tasks become increasingly simple. An example is the otherwise well paid telephone operator at the exchange. Until recently she worked only part of the day giving information to people and for the rest she tended to international and internal communications. Most operators now only work 4 hours a day and only give information. In the near future their work will be even more depreciated by the use of computers and monitors: the telephone operator will then become a kind of punch operator, punching in the name of the subscriber after which the monitor shows the number!!!

Peoples' control of their lives

Perhaps I have presented a too pessimistic view in my preceding considerations. It is of course true that women receive more education, that prosperity is still increasing, that women who do have or had work don't let themselves be pushed around so easily etc. Still, I think we have to remain very alert: what are the limits and weaknesses of the system?

A question of equal importance is: what are we aiming for?

Helena Berends