WIMB £500 BURSARY PRIZE WINNER AOIFE BURKE
BY AOIFE BURKE
A Woman’s Role is in the Revolution
As women, the space assigned to us is somehow both endless and crushingly restrictive. It is endless in the seemingly inexhaustive list of roles designated to woman; wife, mother, worker, carer, pretty face, sex-symbol, girl boss, baby-maker, home-maker, peace-maker … there is no end to the spaces we must fill in order to truly live up to society’s standard of woman. Yet at the same time, there is no room for us. Women are locked out of decision making, on a double shift of paid and unpaid labour without compensation, subjected to violation and abuse, denied access to basic freedoms and bearing the brunt of crisis’ such as COVID-19, climate change, economic inequality and war. Under these conditions, there is no room made for women’s voices, for our needs, for our autonomy or for our expressions of self. Womanhood is thus a kind of spaceless space, that is of endless benefit to society and yet is still confined to its margins.
This is womanhood as created and placed by patriarchy. This is a historical system of domination and oppression that conceives of woman as a commodity to be used. The unpaid reproductive and domestic labour of women was carved out as an essential resource to uphold the workforce during the shift towards industrialisation and capitalism. In this context woman is not treated as an integrated part of society, but rather a tool used by society to uphold the creation of wealth. Similarly, under restrictions on reproductive rights, a pregnant woman is placed not as a fully autonomous person, but as a womb; a tool used in the creation of a person. Devastating rape culture finds its roots in this same process of othering; woman’s body is constructed not as someone, but as something; an object to be consumed, used, discarded. This ideology of domination attempts to define woman’s place in society and justify the range of abuses she endures, from the most mundane challenges of thankless work to the most extreme forms of violence.
Yet womanhood, as both a collective history and a personal identity, has always fought against this oppressive placement. We have always known ourselves as full and autonomous human beings, even when there isn’t space for us to be. This is seen in the mass movements for female liberation throughout the world, from the fight of the suffragettes and trade unionists for basic equality to the movements like #metoo, demanding freedom from a culture of sexual abuse. Women’s history bursts through the seams of our designated role. It is a history of resistance, of revolution against the structures that seek to define and oppress us. This is seen not only in great moments of collective uprising, but in the identity of every woman, whose very existence as a whole person, with needs and value, is a revolt against the ideas of patriarchy.
Womanhood is not only linked to the struggle for female liberation, but to the struggle of all oppressed peoples. The ideas of othering, exploitation and domination that have shaped the historical conditions of womanhood, are reflected in the processes of racism and colonization, in the oppression of the working class, in the destruction of the environment and in almost all forms of bigotry and discrimination. Just as women have been seen as a commodity to be controlled, exploited and consumed, so too have colonized land and peoples, workers and the earth herself. The connection of women’s liberation to these issues is often direct and material. For instance, the process of colonisation often involved the imposition of oppressive gender roles on societies where women had previously been respected as equals. Similarly, the climate crisis has a direct connection to women’s oppression as women are disproportionately harmed by issues such as natural disasters, extreme weather and forced migration.
It is no surprise then, that women throughout history have overcome immense barriers to join and at times lead the resistance against these acts of subjugation. Women’s liberation means ending the structures of injustice that have taken so many forms in our society and history and thus our faith is tied up with all movements for freedom. This reality has often been embodied by feminist leaders throughout Irish and global history. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, a defining figure of the Irish feminist movement, also made major contributions to the movements for national liberation and socialism, all of these struggles being ultimately linked. The same can be found in the black liberation movement in the United States, with figures such as Angela Davis highlighting the connections between the fight for women’s rights, racial equality and economic justice. For as long as there has been the marginalisation and exploitation of peoples and land, the role of women has been one of resistance.
Ultimately, to know where a woman belongs, we must first ask ourselves where womanhood can be found; socially, politically, historically. When we face this truth of womanhood, we see that woman is, and always has been, bound up in the universal struggle between oppression and justice. She can choose to avoid this reality, construct in her mind some “other woman”, lesser than herself or less fortunate than herself, to whom this struggle really applies. But no such delusion can separate woman, one and all, from patriarchy; the systems of oppression in which her very identity was forged and from which she must fight to be liberated. There is no justice, no freedom for woman in this system, and so woman herself must dismantle the system and shape her own role. Through revolution, we can reimagine not only the place of womanhood in society but our very understanding of womanhood itself.
