An analysis of the ideology of woman's domestic role and its social effects in modern Britain

This thesis applies the concepts of historical and dialectical materialism to an analysis of the position of women in contemporary Britain. A critique of feminist and marxist-feminist theories leads to a theorisation of ideology elaborating its role in the maintenance and reproduction of state power. Ideology exists in the form of material practices within ideological state apparatuses, by this means the social division of labour, through which the hegemony of the ruling class is maintained, is reproduced. A concrete analysis of the forms of existence of the ideology of a woman's place being in the home reveals the effects that specific ideological practices have on the socio-sexual division of labour, and the class nature of this ideology. The socio-sexual division of labour within the work force is explained through an examination of ideological practices at different levels of the social formation. Social Security law and protective legislation are based on and elaborate the ideological social relations defining the places assigned to women, these are reproduced by legal practices. Government policy towards women workers reproduces the sexual division of labour within the family and within the work force while aiming to increase the number of married women in the work force through the expansion of part-time workers. Trade Union practices, past and present, reproduce ideological divisions within their own ranks and within the work force. Through these practices married women have become part of the relative surplus population and are maintained as a low paid, poorly organised sector of the work force. The struggle for equal pay and a local campaign for a day nursery, placed in the context of government policies on preschool provision, reveal that the class struggle of the proletariat is weakened by the ideological social relations of a woman's place