Rodin's "Thinker" and others grounded in feminism in Bielefeld

The Bielefeld Care Revolution regional group redecorated the city's monuments in a feminist style, turning "The Thinker" and others upside down, so to speak. Here we document pictures and speeches from the action.

Contribution to the first Bielefeld care walk at male/female (picture above)

We are standing here in front of the Bielefeld Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK).

The connection between this place and the topic of gender equality is obvious to us - after all, it stands for an essential faction of the locally organised economy: industry and commerce. And economics always has something to do with power, the distribution of power and the distribution of resources. And therefore also with the question of distributive justice, which always includes the question of gender justice.

As a starting point, however, we would first like to turn to the sculpture that has been erected here on the forecourt of the IHK:

It is called male/female, it was designed by the American artist Jonathan Borofsky and the Chamber of Industry and Commerce presented it to the people of Bielefeld in 1999 to mark its 150th anniversary. However, many people in Bielefeld, especially many women, were not quite so pleased with this gift at the time: the sculpture was controversial.

How is this sculpture - and in this place of all places - to be read? According to the IHK website, the nine-metre-high work is intended to illustrate harmony, peace and creativity at their peak, which arise from the combination of male and female energy with grace and balance. Borofsky himself says that he wants to inspire reflection by reversing the natural reality of birth.

Well, we want to do him that favour here today.

A large, stylised male body whose upper body encloses a much smaller, stylised female body. The binary understanding of male/female taken up here seems to me to be a rather hierarchical one - and not that of yin and yang.

For us, this sculpture in this location symbolises an outdated, patriarchal, but unfortunately also hegemonic understanding of "economy". The "large" male sphere of production surrounds the "small" female sphere of reproduction. It is the transfer of the image of a bourgeois nuclear family to the national economy. Although the model is outdated and there is no longer a de facto family wage, the image and its value still exist. The productive "family breadwinner" grants the reproductive labourer "household money".

Thus, the economy of a society appears to be primarily market-economic production with its employment in the form of wage labour and its output in the form of material goods, services for sale and profit. From this - depending on the cash situation and taste - "household money" can be made available to social reproduction for subsistence, education, upbringing and other care activities. Almost all representatives of the economic sciences, business and employers' associations and chambers of industry and commerce insist on this understanding.

This is why care work and its conditions are under so much pressure, and why it often becomes a disposable asset in the public budget.

Yet the opposite is true: reproduction is what makes production possible in the first place. It should be portrayed as the "great", the indispensable, the foundation on which all production is based. According to the Federal Statistical Office, in 2022 only just under 20 of the average 45 hours of social work performed in Germany was paid work. But over 25 hours were spent on unpaid care work. And Oxfam makes it clear: "A key factor in the inequality between men and women is that unpaid care work ... Three quarters of unpaid care work worldwide is done by women. Women and girls do at least 12 billion hours of unpaid labour every day. If the minimum wage is applied to this work, this equates to 11 trillion US dollars a year - 24 times more than the combined turnover of tech giants Apple, Google and Facebook in 2018.

Why are child-rearing, housework and care only considered part of the economy when wages are paid for them? The demand "wages for housework" played on this fact in the 1970s.

Today, the German-Swiss initiative "Economy is Care", among others, is working on this reversal of the situation from head to toe. It focuses on unpaid social labour and fights for its inclusion in what is regarded as the economy. The aim of all production must be the best and most sustainable reproduction possible. Not profits and the highest possible sales figures! The only growth that is worth striving for is the improvement of social reproduction, the basis of a prosperity that benefits everyone. "Public luxury" is the term proposed for this.

For us, planetary justice requires precisely this gender- and human-centred reversal in the understanding of "economy". By campaigning against regulations such as the Supply Chain Act, for the reduction of capital and corporate taxes and for lower social benefits, and by railing against any idea of redistribution , the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and other private sector lobby organisations are blocking urgently needed change. At the moment, there are also renewed calls for longer working hours in order to generate more material or much more economic growth. However, we certainly do not need energy-intensive growth in German industrial production for both planetary justice and planetary preservation. Rather, we need its climate-friendly conversion. Their transformation from a competition-driven, climate-threatening import/export economy to a sufficiency-based reproduction economy.

We are in favour of this social change and call it the Care Revolution! And we are calling for a care economy that is orientated towards the needs of all people and the necessities of other beings in the Earth's ecosystem - instead of profits. {Unfortunately, the fact that these also tend to accumulate in the hands of a small number of people, most of whom are men , is still the crowningglory of injustice. The fatal consequences of extreme wealth for the carbon footprint and any form of justice will hopefully be addressed at many events at the Think-Feel-Act Congress}. As with our first stop at the Kinderladen, we would like to continue to invite you to brush society against the patriarchal and capitalist grain and to visit other places with us where we want to think with you about other perspectives on life and its organisation in the here and now.

The Thinker in front of the Bielefeld Kunsthalle

- feministically edited

According to "Art 101", The Thinker is far more than a depiction of a pensive individual. Rodin himself described the figure with the words: "He is dreaming. Slowly the fertile thought develops in his brain. Suddenly he is no longer a dreamer; he is a creator." [....] The sculpture quickly became a symbol of human reason, creativity and the ability to develop complex ideas.1

1https://www.kunst101.com/rodins-der-denker-mehr-als-nur-ein-mann-der-nachdenkt/

Well then ....

More complex ideas instead of traditional patriarchal standards!