Gender

This chapter reconstructs some of the main tenets of the theorization of ‘gender’ by western, and particularly anglophone, Marxist and socialist feminists from the 1970s to the present. It departs from a succinct reconstruction of the comments on women’s role, relations between the sexes, and the nature of femininity that are present in Marx’s early writings and in Capital, as well as in Engels’s The origin of the family, private property and the state. It then proceeds to outline some of the main debates among Marxist and socialist feminists centred on the relationship between gender relations and relations of production, from dual sex/gender system analyses, to those discussions that foreground the subjective dimensions of gender identification and gender formations. Specific sections are then devoted to discuss the debates on gender and race, the role of gender oppression within capitalism and the more recent contributions of transgender Marxists to a re-appraisal of the relationship between gender and sex.