Commentary on Hertz, Kaplan, Grossman

Abstract

The three previous papers have explored the circumstances under which women from different classes and in different periods have articulated their consciousness as women and developed strategies for winning emancipation and power. The papers have evaluated the importance of class and gender, traced changing goals and tactics, assessed the relationship of women's struggles to other movements and ideologies, and analyzed the success and failure of the strategies employed. When the three papers are viewed together, they reveal a deep division in the ranks of activist women. Middleclass women sought moderate reforms, adopted individualistic or limited collectivist strategies and eschewed alliances with political movements. Working-class women turned to socialist movements where, however, their economic and feminist interests were represented only sporadically and partially. What, then, do these papers suggest about the sources of this division and about the options open to women of different classes? The historical evidence presented suggests that women's social and ideological position and perceptions were determined primarily by class. Within the general framework set by class, gender, and in some cases religion, both influenced class relations and shaped feminist consciousness. Class factors seem to have been most influential when capitalist economic and social relations were most developed, when social mobility was limited, and when women occupied a low position in the social hierarchy and were strongly affected by economic crises. For most of the women studied, class position as determined by birth, by marriage and by employment reinforced rather than contradicted one another. The papers might have emphasized more strongly that this reinforcement increased women's ability to organize and act by minimizing conflicts about identity and aims, but it also limited the appeal of the movements established. Gender and religion did not always operate harmoniously within the general framework determined by class. Women, individually and collectively, undoubtedly experienced