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Women's Reproductive Labor-- How Valuable Is It?

© Amy Condra-Peters

In Celebration of Women's History Month!

"Sometimes it1s okay to suck up to the boss." At least, this is the proclamation of a pro-breastfeeding poster designed by INFACT Canada, an organization which advocates political action aimed at protecting a woman1s legal right to nurse her child. But who, ultimately, is the "boss" in the development of a breastfeeding relationship, the individual woman or the patriarchal and/or capitalist forces in the workplace? The decision of whether or not to breastfeed may well be influenced by a society in which reproduction and production are in direct opposition to each other. The point at which these two processes intersect is not fixed; rather, liberal feminism and socialist feminism address the issue of birth and lactation within frameworks that differ considerably from each other.

In the landmark liberal feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the following: "...men are unwilling to place women in situations proper to enable them to acquire sufficient understanding to know how even to nurse their babies." Such a concern no longer commands real attention in the liberal feminist movement, which is more likely than other feminist movements to consider breastfeeding as a restrictive obligation. Liberal feminism1s concern for the equality of opportunity in the work force is more compatible with the freedom associated with bottle-feeding. Protective legislation for working mothers may even be opposed by liberal feminists on the grounds that it is a form of discrimination and may prompt employers to retaliate by hiring men rather than women. Breastfeeding, to liberal feminists, is a matter of individual choice rather than an issue of political concern. Liberal feminism has traditionally fought to free women from their enslavement in an unequal society by demanding equal access to education, economic resources, and civil and legal rights. In 1792 Wollstonecraft stressed the need for necessity of female participation in the public sphere as well as the role of women in the rearing of children, but she did not address how these two need could be met simultaneously. Similarly, in 1963 Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, in which she urged middle-class American women to fulfill their intellectual potential by combining motherhood with a career. Friedan, however, did not consider the difficulties inherent in such a double burden. Thus, although liberal feminists value both reproduction and production, they do not specifically provide a means to combine these tasks.