Federici
In Silvia Frederici’s work “The Caliban and the Witch” she describes, in various points, how in the transition of feudalism to capitalism between the 13th and 17th centuries, the degradation of women became prominent. It all began when the communal lands and open field systems were closed off and became privatized, so the cooperation of the labor of agriculture was affected. Individual contracts of labor became more favorable than collective ones, thus producing inequalities in wage earnings and spiking an increase in vagabonds. This greatly affected families, which disintegrated, and most predominantly, women. Even elderly women were affected, no longer being able to be supported by their children, having to steal, and borrow to survive.
As the enclosures (privatization of mass areas of land) began to spread, women suffered the most. It became difficult for women to become vagabonds because misogyny was growing and they would ofter succumb to male violence. Women were also less able to do much on account of children and pregnancy. Women could not become soldiers nor help out the army in other ways because they were expelled from following the armies as they have done before. Furthermore, women were not included in occupations for wage and when they were it was reduced to one-thirds of the reduced wage men made. Many women turned to prostitution as a means of survival for themselves and children.
In the later part of the 17th century, to aid in the rapid decline of the population there were laws that were passed that upheld marriage and penalized celibacy. This was where witch hunting was born, where women would be criminalized for exercising control over their own bodies and not using it for the sole purpose of repopulating. Any form of birth control would be demonized: celibacy, contraception, abortion and infanticide, and severe punishments ensued. In France, women were sentence to death if pregnancies and births were not registered and/or if infants died before baptism. During this time, women were executed in large numbers.
Also during this time, woman’s labor was deemed non-work and their bodies were seen as a natural resource. With the continued privatization of land, came a new sexual division of labor. Women were forced and used only for reproductive purposes. Through women there was capital to be made by producing a constant supply of workers. Women were subjected to a double dependency: on employers and on men.
