From the 4in1 perspective to the women's strike

Or staying power and self-empowerment

Thoughts on an eventAround 100 people attended. Or rather more, because that's roughly what the Titania can hold. And chairs had to be fetched again and again. Some babies were also brought along by their mums. Many women* simply can't - or don't want to - leave their children anywhere when they get involved in politics. And why should they (have to) do so? Aren't children also citizens? Don't they have a legitimate place in the public sphere instead of being banished to the invisibility of the private sphere? After all, what is done in politics concerns children (too). It is also their world that is being shaped. And if they are involved, they may be less likely to ignore it. And that was precisely the focus of an event organised by Care Revolution Rhein-Main on 25 September 2018 in Frankfurt. About participation. And about responsibility. About a new distribution of the different activities that are necessary for human life as an individual and for living together in a community. How can everyone develop to their full potential, i.e. be free, realise themselves as human beings and at the same time help shape the conditions that enable everyone to live freely and well? In her 4in1 perspective, Frigga Haug identifies four fields in which people must be active so that the good life can become a reality for all. Firstly, there is caring for ourselves and for others. All the activities that keep us alive in the first place. So preparing food and serving food. Protecting ourselves from danger, but also from heat, cold, wet or dirt. Calming fear and comforting loss. Encourage discouragement and weakness. Enable the experience of belonging. Learning the mother tongue and all the codes that are necessary to communicate with other people, e.g. a minimum of empathy and politeness. And much more. A second field of activity is that of paid or gainful employment. An activity in which we fulfil certain tasks in return for payment. In our very labour-intensive society, in which many goods and services have to be bought or paid for, it is necessary for most people to carry out an activity that generates money. Only a few, e.g. rich heirs, have so much money that they don't need to worry about it. Then there is a third area of activity that is just as important, but is often wrongly regarded as a luxury, namely leisure, art and education. These are all activities that enable a person to develop their creativity and all other abilities, including critical thinking, for example. Finally, the fourth area is politics, i.e. the joint shaping and negotiation of the social conditions that determine how we live together. This is an area that is currently being handed over all too easily to "professional politicians". In our society, these four areas of activity are valued completely differently. Wage labour occupies a disproportionately large central space. Everything else revolves around it and is subordinated to it. As a result, the other areas of activity are given far too little attention and are considered rather worthless. So many things atrophy for many people. Injustice is spreading. Participation becomes impossible and the good life for all becomes an unattainable utopia. How can this imbalance be changed? Firstly, by recognising that the situation is imbalanced. And then by analysing the reasons for it. And this requires leisure and education. And that takes time. And that brings us to the realisation of the different value of time. Because time as a resource has a completely different status in wage labour than, for example, in caring or leisure. The less time is needed to produce certain goods, the greater the productivity. And productivity is a central criterion in this area, where value creation is determined by maximising savings in working time. Work must be organised in such a way that as much time as possible is saved. In care, on the other hand, no time can be saved. The quality of care depends largely on the amount of time available. There are (life) processes that cannot be accelerated with impunity. The logic of value creation through industrial production for the market must not be transferred to other areas of activity, because there value creation, i.e. the creation of something valuable, follows a completely different logic. Eleonora Roldan Mendivil supplemented Frigga's remarks with a report on the formation of the Berlin Women's Strike Alliance. We are living in a historic moment where women* are mobilising massively in many places in the world, especially on the so-called margins (Latin America, India) but also in the USA, Spain and Poland. They are rebelling against patriarchy and capitalism. And we in Germany should - or rather: can - courageously bring together very different spectrums that want social change in order to shape the great transformation together. To do this, we must enter into dialogue with each other and listen to each other in order to learn from each other's different experiences - (area of activity of education!). We were brought up and went to school in a (formal and informal education) system that reproduces the prevailing neoliberal patriarchy. However, the respective suffering of some and others can lead us to question the status quo. And together we can then seek and find new answers. Feminists have always regarded their own experience as an important source of knowledge. We must be or become experts in our own lives. It takes time to unlearn what we have learned in our patriarchal and neoliberal socialisation and to develop a new way of thinking. And it takes experiences that need to be made and analysed. So if we set out to change ourselves and society, we will need a lot of patience. It won't happen overnight, but only gradually. It has to be a process that moves from the bottom up, from the margins to the centre, so that we don't just hand out small consolations without touching the structures. We need to set out and empower ourselves together, and become more and more people who work to revalue the prevailing value of the areas of activity and thus also change the prevailing symbolic order. The next concrete stage is 8 March 2019. Our actions on that day will be like a stone thrown into the water. The waves will keep getting bigger and bigger. There will be an opportunity to join us on our journey on 9 November in Göttingen, where the next supra-regional Care Revolution network meeting will take place, as well as a large networking meeting of the Women's* Strike Alliance on the following two days.Elfriede Harth