Assignment 6
In The Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, she begins saying how in Europe land privatization was the beginning of the Capitalism. In the 16th century, for example, European merchant got land from the Canary Islands to convert this land in a sugar plantation giving to Europe an easy way to increase their wealth.
After reading this chapter it is clear that the degradation of women that Federici refers is the treatment women had during this period of transition to a Capitalism. The state felt it was the owners of the women body. Since the beginning, there was a sexual division of labor making women more dependent on men. For example, the state and the people who hired women to do any kind of labor established the wage based on men’s labor. As a result, women’s wage was lower and they still had to dependent on men all the time(Pg. 75). From this unpaid labor or not equal wage the State was able to get more wealth.
As the book mentions the reduction of wage affected not just men who had to work more and get less money but also affected women’s wage in a tremendous way. “In the 14th century, they had received the half pay of a man for the same task; but by the mid-16th century, they were receiving only one-third of the reduced male wage” (pg. 77). This reduction in wages caused several women to choose prostitution as a way to earn money and support their families. Of course, this was another way to minimize women since prostitution was not considered as a job.
Something that surprised me to read was how women were judged and punished if something happened to their children. During the 16th and 17th century there were forms of surveillance for women during pregnancy and maternity. If for some reason the baby was born dead or died during childbirth the only guilty person was the mother. This was considered infanticide and the mother had to receive a punishment as be executed.(Pg.88)
In this chapter by Silvia Federici, we found how women’s bodies were controlled by the State. Women were considered machines that only served to work and as the author mentions “produce children for the state” (Pg.92). Women could not have any important employment and there were forced to get jobs as domestic servants, farmhands, spinners, knitters and even all these occupations were considered not important and not “productive”.
Finally, because there were no jobs prostitution became a form women used to survive and this was also judged with punishments, for example in Madri if a woman was in the prostitution she could receive a hundred lashes (pg.94).
