The women of today and the women of the past experience the same gender inequality in new variations: Patriarchal standards for physique, prohibition from the public sphere, and the wealth disparities and stereotyping of women from ideologies passed down generationally. Feminist ideology advocates use of the state for resources and policy solutions and against the deficiencies and inequity of the state, supporting a radical restructuring of institutions for the creation of gender equality. Flora Tristan, on-the-ground activist and feminist writer, documents the restrictions to the French, Peruvian, and English women of the 1800s. Flora is a labor organizer and socialist feminist theorist advocating for labor rights, women’s liberation, and cross-border solidarity. A historical figure of the early 19th century, Flora collected observations of several elite ruling classes and undervalued factory workers, writing of the particular oppression faced by individuals who are both women and in the working class.
To speak of the woman who is under patriarchal socialization is to say she is confined into a sole object of desire, seen without wit or passion, prone to submission by males. The woman is prohibited from engaging in the public sphere — careers are for men — and restricted to the private sphere of home life. Woman is an individual capable of independence but is stripped from her freedoms before birth. Resemblances of how women are socialized, and the gender inequities present in the contemporary world pattern the restrictions seen in the 19th century woman of Peru, England, and France. Flora notes:
“Man, accustomed to seeing in woman only a little doll whose whole merit is indicated by the proportions of her waist, cannot of course accept such a being as his equal; he does not see in her either bodily strength or moral vigor, and can ask her neither for aid in his works nor inspiration for his thoughts: in his eyes, woman is summed up as a pretty toy, who must be held under a glass, like a bouquet of artificial flowers that dust can tarnish. What happens, given this manner of envisaging women? When the pretty toy is faded, or the rose withered (to use the classic comparison), it is thrown out with disdain, in order to out under the glass a new rose, a bud scarlet open and brilliant with freshness.”
The 1800s public sphere is confined to and controlled by men. The men, governed by patriarchal ideologies, define the way in which women can function in society. Flora clarifies this as “the church having said that woman was sin; the legislator, that by herself she was nothing, that she was not to enjoy any rights; the wise philosopher, that because of her structure she had no intelligence.”
Flora was forward thinking in her dreams for equality across genders and national borders. She argued that even her theory writing was inefficient for change in itself. She urged that we must do direct action, in addition to writing and reading feminist theory. Her work and personhood influenced many; theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels repeated her “Workers of the World, Unite!” motto in the Communist Manifesto. Flora advocated for the creation of labor unions, held meetings to share her writings, and even went so far as to dress in disguise as a man to secretly listen in on parliament sessions and representatives’ speeches in England.
She continually emphasizes the importance of women understanding their positionality within the working class, facing both class and gender oppression. She states that ideologies viewing women as inferior socialize women into internalizing those ideas: “Molded by hypocrisy, bearing fully the heavy yoke of opinion, all her impressions on reaching maturity, everything that develops her mental faculties, everything that she undergoes has the inevitable result of materializing her tastes, of dulling her mind and hardening her heart.”
The ramifications of the patriarchy are lingering effects that reproduce gender inequity in new forms over decades and centuries. Flora’s writings are reminiscent of gender oppression in the 21st century. It is from this acknowledgment of inequality, that this oppression is a social problem, from which we can conceptualize a future of liberation and gender equity.