Feminist class politics - Care Revolution at an international networking meeting

Report by Jette Hausotter & Kristin Ideler[caption id="attachment_3628" align="alignright" width="160"] Logo of the "Summer School Feminist Class Politics Belgrade 2018", photo: Jette Hausotter[/caption]From 30 September to 4 October 2018, an international exchange and networking meeting for feminists and LGBTIQ people in left-wing social movements took place in Belgrade. Around 90 people from many countries in Eastern, Southern and Western Europe as well as from Russia, the USA and some Latin American countries took part. The event was organised by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is also a cooperation partner of the Care Revolution Network. Active members of our network were represented in various workshops.

Background and aim of the meeting

[caption id="attachment_3638" align="alignright" width="1800"] Participants of the meeting; Photo: Iva Janković and Minja Pavlović (All rights reserved)[/caption] In their invitation, the organisers referred to the current strengthening of right-wing governments and right-wing populist policies, which present themselves as a response to the impositions of neoliberalism and thereby promote racist, sexist and classist divisions in society. At the same time, there are currently diverse counter-movements and there are increasingly large and successful feminist mobilisations worldwide, especially against attacks on women's* and LGBTIQ rights. Against this backdrop, the meeting was intended to bring together feminist struggles in various fields relating to care work, the economy, ecology and body politics. The aim was to learn from each other in order to strengthen feminism and LGBTIQ issues in the various left-wing movements and political fields of action in which the participants are active. The very large and very intensive meeting also provided a great opportunity to develop transnational networks and practices, especially between East and West.

Feminist class politics as a diverse emancipation movement: a response to the crisis of social reproduction

[caption id="attachment_3630" align="alignnone" width="1050"] Activism exhibition in the foyer, photo: Jette Hausotter[/caption] In the EU and the EU accession countries, we are currently experiencing a neoliberal economic policy that focuses on cuts in all social areas and is particularly detrimental to women and excluded or marginalised groups. At the conference, various authors presented their highly recommended country studies on the effects of these austerity policies on women. Feminist class politics was introduced at the conference as an explicit counter-movement to these austerity policies. In this context, Barbara Fried from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's Institute for Social Analysis and an active member of the Care Revolution Network emphasised that feminist class politics strives to overcome the crisis of social reproduction and abolish all relations of domination. This "intersectional" approach was immediately put into practice at the conference, with a very diverse spectrum of experiences, life realities and struggles represented. Starting from regionally and socially very different left-wing (queer) feminist standpoints - but predominantly with a practical, activist background - legal and social issues and various power relations were analysed. The first day focussed on different areas of feminist class politics and included workshops on intersectionality, feminist ecology and feminist economic critique. The second day focused on labour and austerity. Various feminist organisations in paid and unpaid work were presented in the workshops: Women's strikes in Spain and Latin America, women's politics in trade unions in Germany, Croatia and Macedonia, and labour struggles in precarious paid work (including nursing in Croatia, textile sector in Ukraine, undocumented migrant women's work in Greece). The third day focussed on "Reproductive Justice". This term, coined by Black feminists in the USA, means a combination of reproductive rights, in particular the right to abortion, with social rights, e.g. support for parents and children regardless of social background. The workshops focussed on left-wing approaches against gender-based violence, struggles for abortion rights, approaches to improving the situation of care workers and care recipients as well as LGBTIQ rights and emancipatory family policy.

A left-wing feminisation of politics means radical democratisation

[caption id="attachment_3631" align="alignnone" width="1800"] Panel event "Feminisation of politics", photo: Kristin Ideler[/caption] One cross-cutting topic was the question of what participants expect from the feminisation of politics. There was a film screening of "Alcaldessa - Ada for Mayor", a documentary about the election campaign of the current mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau from the "Barcelona en Comú" list. This is a platform of local social movements that want to bring radical democratic, feminist politics into the institutions. The film shows Colau's electoral success, but also the hurdles that a cooperative political organisation has to deal with in representative democracy and the sexist structures that the feminisation of politics is fighting against. A public panel event on the same topic took place one evening in an alternative cultural centre in Belgrade. The panellists were: Sarah Leonard(Women's Strike, USA), Jelena Miloš(Zagreb per NAŠ, Croatia), Ángela Rodríguez "Pam"(En Marea - Unidos Podemos, Spain) and Helena García Jiménez(Barcelona en Comú, Spain). It became clear that a left-wing feminisation of politics does not simply mean having more women in political office, but a change in the patriarchal character of politics through forms of radical democracy: horizontal instead of hierarchical, inclusive instead of competitive, putting care at the centre of one's own actions, e.g. by taking into account the care work duties of activists.

Care work at the centre of feminist class politics

[caption id="attachment_3632" align="alignnone" width="1050"] Impression of a workshop, photo: Jette Hausotter[/caption] During the five days, many thematic strands were intersected, but necessarily also explored in depth in parallel. One strand, for example, was dedicated to the paradigm shift in economics and politics that is necessary from a left-wing feminist perspective and which the Care Revolution Network also stands for. In her presentation, the feminist economist and activist Sandra Ezquerra from Barcelona criticised the fact that the prevailing economic sciences do not adequately address unpaid care work and called for social reproduction to be placed at the centre of economic analysis and politics. She presented data from Spain on the different use of time by men and women and pointed out the connection with the unequal distribution of income and social participation. With regard to political action, she reported on how the current government of "Barcelona en Comú" is striving to democratise care work. In doing so, she referred to a government study she co-authored, including recommendations for action: To this end, local care policy has been placed in economic rather than social administration. The aim is to support people as care givers and care receivers throughout their lives. In addition, models of solidarity in the distribution of work, welfare and participation are to be established in the long term, starting with the expansion of social infrastructures and increased attention to care work as the foundation of society. These topics were then explored in greater depth in a workshop ("The work that makes all work possible" - Feminist struggles around care work"), in which Jette Hausotter from Berlin presented the Care Revolution Network as an organising approach. Rafaela Pimentel from Spain also presented the self-organisation of domestic workers Territorio Doméstico. They are migrants in Madrid who have inadequate access to labour and social rights, and they are fighting against the severe exploitation in their sector under the slogan: "Because the world won't move without us". They have already fought for improvements in social rights and are also heavily involved in the feminist movement, e.g. the women's strike, for a change in the social organisation of care work in which exploitative conditions have no place. Ana Vračar from the organisation BRID spoke about the strategies and difficulties of organising nurses in Croatia, whose working conditions have deteriorated massively as a result of neoliberal privatisation. The nurses have to act from a situation of little power, from isolation, especially in rural nursing, which is provided by GP practices or the individually employed nurses there. In this care work workshop, the difficulty of overcoming isolation was discussed, as well as the experience of combining mutual practical support with political activism. In addition, the recruitment of care workers from Eastern Europe and the Global South to solve the "care crisis" in the West was critically discussed, regardless of whether formal or informal migration and labour relations are involved. This does not mean opposing migration, but fighting for improvements in paid care and domestic work and an expansion of social infrastructures regardless of status or nationality - and stopping austerity policies. In the workshop "Women United: Feminist approaches to trade unions", the various practices of feminist class politics were brought together for discussion. Tina Tešija from BRID presented the women's trade union school. Here, trade unionists and feminists come together to discuss current labour, social and family policy issues and also acquire practical skills in giving speeches and leading labour disputes. Several of the speakers emphasised how ambivalent the role of women* in trade unions still is: feminist perspectives that put care at the centre are urgently needed in trade union struggles, but at the same time the resistance can be enormous and it is not a matter of course that trade unions support feminist struggles, e.g. around body politics. Klementina Ristovska from the "Dunja" social centre in Skopje, Macedonia, reported on how the feminist context in the centre supports the labour struggles of seamstresses, including through solidarity-based childcare structures, fundraising and solidarity campaigns. The aim here is to improve the fighting conditions of women* in a working world that continues to be characterised by partriarchy, classism and racism and to combine feminist demands and trade union struggles in practice. From Germany, Kristin Ideler, ver.di trade union secretary in Hesse and an active member of the Care Revolution network, reported on the strike disputes in the social and educational services. She showed how women* have stirred up the union 'from below' in this strike movement. The debate in the context of the Care Revolution also received a great deal of attention and it became clear that although the care-centred policies described above have arrived in the trade unions, their feminist transformation perspective must also be reflected in the demands for future struggles. Marina Ivandić, the moderator of the workshop and also a member of BRID and the Croatian Road Workers' Trade Union, emphasised the importance of feminist educational work in trade unions that is oriented towards left-wing class politics. The presented struggles and projects are united by the fact that they have brought feminists inside and outside of trade unions into discussion with each other and have also resulted in joint alliances for concrete struggles.

It goes on!

[caption id="attachment_3633" align="alignleft" width="280"] Stickers with slogans from the women's strike in Spain and from Care Revolution, photo: Jette Hausotter[/caption] In these two workshops and in many other discussion rounds, the approaches developed in the Care Revolution network were practically on everyone's lips. It was encouraging to see that our ideas are also being conceived and further developed in a very similar way in many places: Bringing care work to the centre of left-wing politics and building solidarity between paid and unpaid care workers and care recipients. The exchange on political approaches has shown The women's strike(from 2019 also in Germany), care revolution, wage labour struggles and migration struggles have different topics and focuses, they relate differently to work and to identity, but they belong together as feminist, anti-racist strategies for a liberated society. The opportunity to exchange views on implementation in an international, left-wing, feminist context was a gain for many. Last but not least, this opportunity was used to talk about strengthening political networking along the "care chains", i.e. the global migration chains in care work. We have put transnational solidarity and anti-racist care policies on the future agenda together and will work together in 2019 to further develop our struggles and become more effective together as left-wing, (queer) feminist internationalists!