Christine Delphy: Towards a Materialist Feminism?

One of the most crucial questions currently faced by feminist analysis must surely be that of the relationship of the domestic economy to the oppression of women. It is an issue that raises many problems to which we have as yet only unsatisfactory answers. What is the material basis of the oppression of women? What is the class position of women? How does the situation of women differ from that of other oppressed groups? In Britain there has been a curious reluctance to take up these issues in an explicit and theoretical way. We have had, it is true, the 'domestic labour debate', a highly specialized discussion of the role of women's housework in capitalist production and a dispute about whether it can be said, in marxist terms, to contribute to the production of 'surplus value' (for useful discussions of this debate, see Himmelweit and Mohun, 1977; Bland et al., 1978). But, hoping for a more general treatment of the material basis of women's oppression, many in this country have turned to the work of Christine Delphy, a French feminist sociologist.