Bread and Roses

Gender and Class Under Capitalism

By (author) Andrea D'Atri Translated by Nathaniel Flakin

Publication date:

20 December 2020

Length of book:

208 pages

Publisher

Pluto Press

ISBN-13: 9781786807267

Is it possible to develop a radical socialist feminism that fights for the emancipation of women and of all humankind?

This book is a journey through the history of feminism. Using the concrete struggles of women, the Marxist feminist Andrea D'Atri traces the history of the women's and workers' movement from the French Revolution to Queer Theory. She analyzes the divergent paths feminists have woven for their liberation from oppression and uncovers where they have hit dead ends.

With the global working class made up of a disproportionate number of women, women are central in leading the charge for the next revolution and laying down blueprints for an alternative future. D’Atri makes a fiery plea for dismantling capitalist patriarchy.

Preface to the English Edition
Acknowledgments
Biography
Introduction
Gender and Class on International Women’s Day
Oppression and Exploitation
Gender Unites Us, Class Divides Us
Capitalism and Patriarchy: A Well-Matched Marriage
Women’s Struggle and Class Struggle
1. Grain Riots and Civil Rights
Bread, Cannons, and Revolution
Female Citizens Demand Equality
Liberty, Fraternity, and Inequality of Class and Gender
2. Bourgeois Women and Proletarian Women
Steam Engines, Looms, and Women
Women Workers Organize to Fight
A Government of the Working People of Paris
The Women Incendiaries and the Ladies with Parasols
3. Between Philanthropy and Revolution
Voting Rights or Charity?
Reform or Revolution?
A Woman Living Between Two Eras
On the Need to Welcome Foreign Women
Petition to Reinstate Divorce
The Workers’ Union
The Tour de France
4. Imperialism, War, and Gender
Debates in the Second International
Women at War
Women and Nations
Freedom During Wartime, Oppression During Peacetime?
5. Women in the First Workers’ State in History
The Spark that Could Light the Flame
Bread, Peace, Freedom, and Women’s Rights
Harrowing Contradictions
The Philosophy of a Priest, the Powers of a Gendarme
Comrade Kollontai
Oppositional Women
6. From Vietnam to Paris, Bras to the Bonfire
Economic Boom and Baby Boom
Liberty, Equality, Sorority
Radical and Socialist Feminists Against Patriarchy
7. Difference of Women, Differences Between Women
The Imperialist Offensive Sweeps Everything Away
Autonomous and Institutionalized Feminists in Latin America
Revaluing the Feminine
Integrated or Marginalized
Intersection of Differences
8. Postmodernity, Postmarxism, Postfeminism
The 1990s: NGO-ization and Gender Technocracy
Performativity, Parody, and Radical Democracy
Consumerism, Individualism, and Skepticism
By Way of Conclusion
Appendix
Bread and Roses: International Manifesto (2020)
Bibliography
Index

'At a time when women's economic, political and reproductive rights are under attack worldwide, Andrea D'Atri's exhilarating historical survey of the world's great socialist feminist movements brings us the knowledge we need to fight back!'