Capitalism Would Suffocate Your Feminism.

Feminism defines itself as a struggle to achieve and establish political, economic and social equality of the sexes. The movement has become widely popular, gaining momentum and becoming very controversial in the face of global affairs. At no point in human history has gender relations been this sensitive. Feminists and their allies have fought bitterly to uproot and dismantle structural barriers that have kept women oppressed for far too long. In certain instances, the movement has succeeded while in some, it's a stalemate. The structures of oppression have been built to withstand the fight of interrogation. In certain areas, women have had to make compromises on their rights in order to gain some semblance of moral equality. Today's world has seen a growing discourse around women; their bodies, their choices and ultimately their existence. The era of social media where women and their allies have engaged crucial topics relating to gender has further amplified the struggle and has taken the movement to a larger audience. Movements such as #MeToo, #Sex4Grades and so on have brought the daily struggles and travails of ordinary women to light.

While obvious structural barriers that oppress women still exist and remain very strong, we cannot deny the little progress that has been made. This progress might be limited to geography as women in certain parts of the world enjoy more liberty and rights to their agency than some other women in other parts of the world. However, the global wave of discourse, struggle, and the fight is something that cuts across every woman. All around the world, more women are enrolled in schools, taking up jobs, aspiring to positions and doing things they would not have been able to do a century ago.

Feminism is a fight against patriarchy - a male-dominated and orchestrated system designed to oppress and subjugate women - and the institutions that support it. What drives patriarchy is the power that men wield: power by influence, the power bestowed by religion, power by capital. At the root of power is ultimately capital. The big issues this article seeks to explore are the dynamics around capitalism, oppression and how patriarchy is intrinsically linked to capitalism. In the course of destroying patriarchy and its allied institutions, we think those efforts would be wasted if there are no constant reminders that the foundations of wealth creation in our society today are flawed and are more disadvantageous to women.

The modern world has become heavily capital and profit-driven; people have exhibited their innate selfish tendencies to exploit the poor, take money away from the public and amass as much wealth as possible.

These systems are built without fairness to workers. In certain areas, strong government regulations have helped in curtailing the excesses of capitalism. However, the institutional flaws allow for maximum

satisfaction and profit at the expense of the working class. How are women systemically affected by this institution? Because of historical prejudice to property ownership, women make up the larger percentage of the world's poor. In a lot of societies, women have historically been disenfranchised from structures such as inheritance, ownership and other avenues that guarantee capital ownership. In fact, in some cultures, women themselves are viewed as property to be inherited; for example in the Yoruba culture of south-west Nigeria where widows are inherited alongside other forms of private property by the male siblings of the deceased.

This leaves a lot of women at the mercy of men who have occupied these posts and control the medium of wealth creation and distribution. Frankly, capitalism is an oppressive system. It is an economic system that takes away from the poor and impoverished and hands over to the few rich in the society.

In destroying patriarchal norms, feminists must also see the role capitalism has played in the oppression of women. The fact that there is a gender-pay gap crisis, a norm of denial of access to employment on the grounds of gender, and so many other problems is an indication of historical and institutional bias against women, and all these stand against them benefiting from this wealth creation scheme. The total liberation of women and equality would not come to pass if issues around economic equality are not engaged. Essentially, women are not poor because they are born poor, but are poor because capitalism as a system of wealth creation and distribution is oppressive and would always cut them out as long as business goes on as usual.

Have women tried to disrupt the capitalist system? We cannot deny the absence of effort to engage the system. However, we think the alternative to solve the problem has been hugely insufficient. In the vast majority of instances, it only created a new set of women capitalists who were and still are in the minority, and also became part of the oppressive system the forbearers set out to go against. While policies such as affirmative action ensured that a few women break into male-dominated organizations, it only provided a smokescreen of solving the problem. This means that all the capitalist system had to do was get a few women in their ranks and claim they had inclusive wealth sharing schemes. It didn't take into consideration the exploitation that comes into play. Conclusively, advocacy that sought to gain inclusion for women in capitalist systems were just struggles to put women in oppressive positons. So top multinationals could have women on their boards but still go on to sponsor dictatorial regimes that oppressed women in other geographies in exchange for secure passage of stolen and exploited mineral resources needed by these top firms to run their business. Acts like these are what keep a lot of women impoverished in poor countries and leave them at the mercy of men. The tool of successful liberation is taken away from them. As long as profit is the ultimate goal of capitalism, it takes away the process of moral equality and financial inclusion.

Some may argue and say that aren't men equally victims of the capitalist system of oppression? After all, men make up a larger percentage of the labour in the most physically-arduous and low-paying industries such as mining, cross-country trucking, and trash collection; and men also make up the larger proportion of homeless people. The problem with this argument is not one of factual inaccuracy; rather it is an attempt to unfairly equate struggles and thus justify the patriarchy. It is willful ignorance of the fact that for every male in these industries, there is an unemployed female who was denied employment into these industries simply because of the pseudo-scientific and patriarchal narrative that certain jobs are the exclusive reserve of men. It is a purposeful neglect of the fact that for every homeless man, there is a woman suffering domestic abuse at the hands of an aggressive spouse, or traditionalist and sexist family members. A woman who can't seek redress for the injustices perpetrated against her because she simply doesn't have access to the economic equality that would afford her proper legal representation. The depth of the oppression is simply not the same.

Another smokescreen of the capitalist brand of inclusion is the platforming of equality messages. While these messages are sold to the customers of capitalist hegemons as progressive, we should see them for what they really are - a case of commercialisation of sensational and trendy topics. There is an urge to want to jump on the woke wagon and this is often great PR for these corporations.

So companies like Shell can in celebration of International Women's Day, recalibrate their nomenclature to She'll in a very clever attempt at virtue signaling, while still maintaining upper-management staffing that is predominantly male. Amazon can decide to celebrate and use their platform to promote messages of equality while they remove health benefits for their workers. While the removal might affect all workers, women are disproportionately affected because that means services like paid abortion and maternity leave, pregnancy and ante-natal services become unavailable to these women.

Ultimately, women should not strive for equality and inclusion within the capitalist model but rather seek to destroy and dismantle the model. While the structure is built on the exploitation of the poor, it is vastly disadvantageous to women; the intersectionality of the feminist cause gives the argument a more logical stance.

At the end of the day, the dynamics of oppression are intricately linked together. We need to understand the realities of oppressed people. People who suffer from one form of oppression or the other are more likely to suffer other multiple levels of oppression. A black woman has to navigate a racist world while also engaging a misogynist and colourist world. That also means she has to engage systems that cut her out of avenues of economic prosperity, even within her own race. All systems of oppression are linked, and we must fight to dismantle all of them because the sustained success of one movement is not guaranteed without a holistic fight against all vestiges of oppression.