Women and Revolution - An angry Egyptian writes

Next weekend in Reykjavik a film festival of short films and documentaries about women and women's rights opens including Hidden Faces about Egyptian women.

In her blog An Angry Egyptian, Egyptian revolutionary socialist Gigi Ibrahim responds to feminist Mona El Tahawy who argues that women in the Middle East are oppressed because men hate them.  She also blames religion for misogyny and sexual violence. El Tahawy has been involved in the protests in Egypt but her understanding of oppression and religion cannot explain how women were able to sleep out in Tahrir Sq for weeks safely, nor why secular and Muslim Egyptians protected Christians whilst they prayed and Christians protected Muslims. In short she does not understand class. For her men can only be part of the problem. Nawal Al Sadawi, Egyptian author, doctor, activist and longtime women's rights campaigner, however does understand.

‘In the square, I felt for the first time that women are equal to men, It's like I carried a burden on my back, and now I feel free.' Al Sadawi was arrested and censored for her work under Anwar Sadat's and Hosni Mubarak's regimes. "Suzanne Mubarak silenced women, killed the feminist movement, and did nothing for us," she said, dismissing the former first lady's "National Council of Women" as little more than a PR campaign for the regime.’

Lives unfettered by possessions or a home

Apologies to Comrade Markin for the slow response to your question. Commenting on To Talk about Women's Oppression We have to Talk about Class, you asked,

‘about the position of women you've described in early 20th Century Iceland. I get the impression that although the same material oppression was experienced as elsewhere in early capitalism, there is a countervailing tendency in that women worked from very early on in the development of capitalism. (In Britain, for instance, it wasn't until the end of the Industrial Revolution that large numbers of women were pulled into the factories). Is this impression correct and, if so, is there any cultural cause behind it?’

It’s true that women in Iceland were at the forefront of Iceland’s transition to capitalism, though women in Britain were also down the mines before they went into the factories.

To understand the way women became industrial workers we need to understand the peculiarities of Iceland’s material conditions and the legal constraints placed upon its peasantry to suit the economic demands of its ruling class.

Iceland was one of the last parts of Europe to be settled from the end of the 9th late C and roughly all the habitable land had been divided up into homesteads by the early 13th C. But the pioneers of one age, the rebellious class that ran away from the Norwegian King Harold Fairhair, were not so keen on rebellion when they had established their farms and needed obedient servants and farmworkers.

Norwegian rule gave way to a more powerful Danish state and monopoly trade with little investment through 17th & 18th C.

By the late 18th C the Icelandic ruling class, made up of landowners, Danish or Icelandic officers of the Danish Crown and its church Lutheranism, had become a conservative force that was actively blocking development. Farm leases were often very short, even two or three years which did not allow people time to improve their land and buildings. Then if tenants did manage to make improvements the rents often went up.[1] There was soil erosion and loss of trees yet the old technologies of drainage and manuring though well known in mainland Europe were barely used, so land was much less productive than it could have been.  

The legal obligations imposed on the peasantry by the Vistarband system saw any peasant family as a source of new paupers so the authorities actively tried to ensure that most people could not marry. By 1850 35- 40% of the population over 15 yrs old were servants. That is unmarried indoor and outdoor workers contracted 1 year at a time, for bed, board + low wages. They were essential to the hay harvest and in the winter women could work on wool processing while the men were sent to fish, for which they received no extra pay with all profit going to their employer. Added to this was a culture of young people being sent out to work and grow up on a farm away from that of their parents as part of their education.[2]

This meant that Iceland had a large highly mobile workforce that owned far fewer material possessions than a person could carry. For instance in the parish records in 1816 Sigríður Einarsdóttir aged 27 was a servant at the farm Hruni in Southern Iceland. In 1818 she moved a few miles west to Þrándarholt in the parish of Hrepphólar until she moved to Miðfell from1824 til 1836. She then moved to another farm in Hrepphólar, Dalbær from 1837-39 and in 1840 moved back to the parish of Hruni and worked at Syði Sandlækur until 1844. The following year Sigríður went back to Miðfell and moved again in 1847 to the parish of Hruni where she was registered as a servant in Hrunakrókur from 1847-50 moving within the same parish in the early 1850’s to Bryðjuholt where she was still registered as a servant in the 1855 census.

In 1816 16 year old Gróa Bjarnadóttir was also in Southern Iceland in the parish of Hruni as a servant at the farm Efrasel. From 1819-22 she moved to Berghylur in the same parish. From 1822-28 Gróa moved to Skipholt in the neighbouring parish of Tungfell. From 1829-1840 she doesn’t show up in the records but in 1840 was registered as a housekeeper in Gröf in the parish of Hruni. She remained at Gröf but after 1855 as a servant. In 1860 she was a servant at Þverspyrna still in the parish of Hruni, Southern Iceland and her final years were at Haukholt in Tungufell where she died in 1864.[3]

There were many reasons why people chose to move; to be near friends or family, to follow a good employer as they changed farm, for better wages and conditions or aging servants may not have had their contracts renewed, others could be sacked though not always with impunity.

'In 1916 Guðrún Þorleifsdóttir was sacked her for refusing to act as an unpaid servant to the local merchant in her free time. Guðrún had been hired to work in the hay and had brought her very young baby with her as was usual, and so argued that at the end of her working day she could expect to be free look after her child and herself. The farmer argued that she had to serve the merchant because the farm women had always done so. The farmer threatened to take her to court but let her off with just being sacked and turned out of the house. In January 1917 the Court found in Guðrún’s favour and the farmer had to pay her severance compensation.' 

Women in Iceland have never been a 'reserve army of labour'. However little they have been paid in money or board and lodgings, and however bad their conditions, they have lived by their work and when new opportunities came with fish and urbanisation they seized them with both hands.

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[1] Gísli Águst Gunnlaugsson, Studia Historica Upsaliensia 154 Family and Household in Iceland 1801-1930 pg 79

  [2] Loftur Guttormsson cited Gísli Águst Gunnlaugsson, Studia Historica Upsaliensia 154 Family and Household in Iceland 1801-1930pg 60

[3] Gísli Águst Gunnlaugsson, Studia Historica Upsaliensia 154 Family and Household in Iceland1801-1930pg 82

New Life Breathed into The old Co-op

The oldest building in the East coast village of Breiðdalsvík is the old Co-op built in 1906. It was the merchant's outpost serving the multiple, relatively small farms that in the 19^th Cent filled the parish of Eydalir in the enormous broad valley, Breiðdalur. This is the building that in its run down state had become the foreigners’ house that we migrant workers lived in 1986.

The old Co-op 1986 with its rusty red roof

Now the old Co-op, which shortly after it was built looked like this,




Gamla Kaupfélagið

has been refurbished as a centre for trekking, historical and geological research and now looks like this.



Gamla Kaupfélagið


See Breiðdalsvík’s website for photos of the restoration of the house





Saltfish and Strikes Part 1

For over a thousand years Icelanders have known that to split a fish, clean and then hang it up in the cold wind will preserve it for months. This dried or harðfisk allowed survival through brutal winters and long sea journeys. It even cleans your teeth as you strip the hard flesh from its skin. However fish that is salted before it’s dried lasts even longer, and when soaked in water to revive it becomes delicate and delicious. So by the 18^th century salting had become Iceland's most important method of fish preservation and until WW2 salted fish was over 60% of the export value of all its fish products.[1]



Salt cod drying Aberdeen c1910

When I last worked salt cod it was to remove the worms infesting the flesh of the ‘wings’ of the fish. Seals were usually blamed for the worms though the cod were more likely to have infected the seals.

I stood in a heated factory removing the worms with large tweezers from the almost ready fish. In the winter of 1915-6, the women first had to clean the cod in open troughs of water on the beach.

The temperature was down to minus 15 degrees centigrade and there was a thick layer of ice on the cod washing tubs in the morning. Hreiðarsína Hreiðarsðóttir got up at four to boil fish for lunch before going to work because she wasn’t happy leaving her daughter to manage the coke oven. A farmer she knew complained that he couldn’t get young women to work as they were paid so much in the fish. Hreiðarsína scoffed at the idea that she was well paid,

‘I’ve worked many fish that are so large that.. [when ready to work - the head removed, gutted and split the length of the body to open it out in one piece] the neck rests on the ground and the tail reaches to my armpit. Each fish has to be cleaned, the back scrubbed, then [scrubbed] under each wing, turn it over and remove any salt without tearing it, pull away the membrane from the chest, take out the bony parts round the neck, remove any blood from the fillets, get into the neck and take out any blood and if its not well done we’d get it back from the inspectors’.

For this heavy, filthy work the women got two aura [0.2 kr] for each fish.[2]

They drank coffee every hour so as not to freeze which they heated on the coke ovens in the saltfish drying shed and of course had to provide for themselves.

Stacking the cod

In 1912 Women fish workers in Hafnarfjörður struck for higher wages. Briét Bjarnhéðinsdóttir, editor of Kvennablaðið, covered the story by phone from Reykjavik. There were about 100 women working in the fish and all of them had stopped work and they had joined the same newly founded union with the men, Verkmannafélagið Hafnarfjarðar. The women reported that they were striking because all kinds of  fish work - spreading, stacking etc was paid at 15 aura per hour (0.15 kr), except ‘wetfish work’ at 18 aura ph. They were unhappiest with overtime and Sunday work - for each they got just 15 aura whilst men were being paid 40-50 aura for Sunday work and even more in Reykjavik. The women wanted; 18 aura for day work 23 aura for overtime from 7 - 11pm 28 aura per hour after 11 pm. 30 aura ph for Sunday work and 40 aura ph for Sunday work after 7 pm. Briét reported that the employers didn’t want to budge, ‘although most of them had thought the demands were fair’.

Briét likens this strike to the British miners’ who went out on strike in February 1912 demanding a minimum wage against a complicated sliding scales of wages that meant that they never quiet knew what they'd get paid. The women in Hafnarfjörður won most of what they wanted, though the article doesn’t go into detail it was a great victory.

Coming soon, Part 2 - Making salt fish while the sun shines

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[1] http://bit.ly/yqjuww  A Comprehensive Overview of the Icelandic Fish Industry, 5.1.3 University of Akureyri

[2] Verkakvennafélagið Framsókn 50 Ára 1914-1964 cited in Íslandsdætur pg 133

Women's Oppression, Empowerment and Breast Implants

There is a link between the breast implant scandal[1] involving at least 400 women in Iceland and hundreds of thousands of women across Europe, and the 'Just Fearless, Women Empowering Women' conference coming to Reykjavik next week.

They are both sold as solutions to what’s wrong in women's lives but are the wrong answers to real problems.

Twenty years ago women had breast implants as part of reconstructive surgery after cancer or a few had implants because they worked in the porn industries. Now thanks to the rise of ‘raunch culture’[2] millions of women round the world are sold breast implants as the solution to the dissatisfaction they feel with their bodies. But 'ideas do not fall from heaven and nothing comes to us in a dream',[3] we have been bombarded with advertising images of ideal female bodies that mean most of us are too thin or more often too fat and we don’t have the right sized breasts. So we are sold the solutions from diets, exercise regimes, padded bras and then implants. The companies selling the cure for the insecurities they have helped create, including cosmetic surgery companies, do it for the enormous profits.  So it was inevitable that a company would eventually cut corners to save money and increase their profits. That company turned out to be Poly Implant Prosthese (PIP), founded by Jean-Claude Mas. Since 2001 his company has been filling implants with industrial-grade silicon suitable for mattresses which cost 1/8^th of the price of medical grade silicon. This means that women with less money, working class women, got these implants rather than better quality ones.

The ‘Women Empowering Women’ Conference is selling the idea that we can fix our lives by starting a business. It says ‘this powerful summit dares women to tackle their personal and professional challenges, be FEARLESS, and plant their feet firmly on the path to success.’ In other words it’s made up of a bunch of motivational speakers, for whom this is a career in itself, plus local business women and the President of Kvenréttindafélag Ísland, the Icelandic Women's Rights Association, Helga Guðrún Jónasdóttir who used to be president of Landssamband Sjálfstæðiskvenna, the national Tory women’s network.

If they can get hundreds of women to pay 2.500 kr and more to pay 5000 kr to ‘meet and greet’ the speakers, then these conferences can be highly lucrative. This ‘empowerment’ is a poisonous idea that throws failure back on the individual as though we can all pull ourselves up if we really want to. It ignores class, access to capital/credit, personal disadvantages, financial crisis and cuts in social spending. It says if your business/life doesn’t work out as planned then it must be your fault - look how successful we all are.

The solution to the PIP scandal is relatively simple - the Government can pay for any women in Iceland who wants to have the implants removed and they can recoup the money from the surgeon who imported and fitted these implants.

The solution to capitalism feeding on and profiting from our insecurities can ultimately only be to get rid of capitalism. But right now we don’t have to stand for the relentless sexualised and sexist advertising nor the insidious ideas of right-wing women with something to sell.

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[1] http://bit.ly/AnLF7R

[2] Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture

[3] Marxist philosopher Antonio Labriola 1966

To Talk about Women's Oppression We have to Talk about Class

In my last post I wrote about the ‘developments in equality’ in the Althing. Women’s equality in Iceland has made great progress since the end of the 19th century but it was fought for by ordinary women and men not handed down by the ruling class.

The source of women’s oppression is much older than capitalism. Its roots lie in the development of class society before the Sumerians invented writing to catalogue their surplus food and tradable goods. It was the rise of class society that created what Frederick Engels[1] called ‘the world historic defeat of the Female Sex’. By which he meant that as developments in agriculture meant more labour was needed so women took on much more responsibility for raising children than they had previously had to. Then women’s lives were further restricted as private property developed to be controlled and handed over to the next generation.[2]

5000 years later under capitalism, the current form of class society, all women experience oppression[3] but that experience is mediated by class. Millions of middle class women around the world can liberate themselves by buying the labour of other women to clean their houses and care for their children. That is not an option for the thousands of millions of working class women, who know that ‘the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.[4]

Kolaburða - carrying coal

The Icelandic magazine Fjallkonan, which strongly supported women’s rights,[5] argued in 1885 that married women in Reykjavik had a slightly easier time than working women as they would not usually need to take the worst jobs. These jobs were collectively called Stritavinna - hard work, they included eyrarvinna - dock work, water carrying and Laugaferðirnar, the innocuous sounding laundry journey.

Eyrarvinna, loading and unloading ships meant carrying cargo, often sacks of coal. The men lifted the sacks onto the women’s shoulders and head, who then carried the load to the warehouses. Horses were apparently too valuable for this work. The worst of it, Fjallkonan pointed out, ‘was that women were only paid a third or quarter of the men’s wage yet they do the same work and as much as the men.’ ‘Nowhere in this country are conditions so like slavery as for the women in Reykjavik who do dock work’.[6]

For the laundry trips, women carried back-breaking loads of washing, in all weathers out to the hot springs, a round trip of several kilometres with no road. If the weather wasn’t dry then the washing would have to be carried back wet. The women also had to carry a tub, bucket, soap and food. Children who were too young to be left at home had to walk there too. There were at least two fatal accidents[7] when women slipped and fell into the boiling water yet a safety frame wasn’t put over the springs until after the turn of the century.

 

Another article in Fjallkonan[8] remembered the deaths and noted that a few krona spent on cement and a metal frame would save lives. Rather optimistically Valdimar suggested this penny pinching was because the Washers were usually women, but the treatment of deckhands proved the authorities were equally content for men to die, to save money, as much as women.

Anna Þorsteinsdóttir, died on her way home from the Springs, when she slipped on ice into a brook and weighed down by the washing pack on her back, drowned. Anna’s horrible death has been commemorated by artist Harpa Björnsdóttir in her sculpture, Fist [9] It's a clenched fist made of soap and plaster, raised to Anna and the memory of all the women who had to wash clothes at Laugardalur.

In 1907 a water carriers wage was 2 aurar[10] per bucket whether a man or woman. Each trip to a well was made with 2 buckets and it took 75 trips per day to earn 3 kr, theoretically a working wage.[11] However it was also common to pay for water carrying in food, clothes and alcohol.

One particular water carrier was called Gunna Grallari because she knew the entire Psalm book Grallarann [12] and sang it constantly whilst carrying water for Hotel Ísland and the chemist NS Krüger as well as cleaning their toilets. Despite being hard work water carrying was usually a job for those unable to stand harder work, so the young, old or unhealthy.

Ásmundur Sveinsson commemorated the water carriers with his extraordinary modernist sculpture Vatnsberi, made in 1936 which last summer was finally moved to the corner of Bankastræti and Lækjargata where the artist intended it should be.

Vatnsberinn

It’s now close to the site of the well named Bernhöftsbrunninn, when Bankastræti was called Bakarastígur or Bakarabrekka, because of the Bernhöfts bakery built in 1834. Explaining the Town Council decision not to allow the statue to be placed centrally, Einar Magnússon commented that the authorities did not see why they had to take the piece seriously as it ‘didn’t represent anything seen by normal eyes’.[13] It’s an unintentionally illuminating comment from a class that wants work done but doesn’t want to see those who do it.

The progress working class women and men have made since has been by collective action, strikes and protests. In 1907 women in Hafnarfjörður working in fishmeal processing went on strike for higher wages and won after barely a day. This was probably the first strike by women in Iceland.[14]

But progress can be lost and if the financial crisis is paid for by ordinary people work will get much harder. As it is, Morgunblaðið reported last week that nurses in the acute wards at the hospital Landspítalan walk 12 km in a single shift. These women have far more in common with their male colleagues who also juggle shift working and childcare, than they have with Halla Tómasdóttir & Kristin Pétursdóttir founders of Auður capital whose mission is to 'feminise' banking.

Improved pay and conditions were fought for originally and they will have to be defended by working class women and men. In Britain on November 30th last year public sector workers made up the biggest strike by women in British history. If the cuts are defeated and working class women’s progress is advanced it’ll be because women of our class stand with working class men against all the women bankers, mangers and Prime Ministers of their class.

[1] Author of Origin of the Family, Private Property & the State

[2] Chris Harman, A Peoples’ History of the World

[3] This explains breast implants which I’ll discuss in the next post.

[4] Joan Violet Robinson, Economic Philosophy pg 45

[5] The editor Valdimar Ásmundsson was married to Briét Bjarnhéðinsdóttir, editor of Kvennablaðið

[6] 31st January 1885

[7] Soffía Ólafsdóttir died from burns after she fell into the spring 17th February 1894, also Kristín Ólafsdóttir 25th August 1898. Sbr. ÞÍ Prestþjónustubók Dómkirkjunnar í Reykjavík 1881–1898.

[8] 27th January 1900

[9] Laugavinna 2009 pg 56 of the book or 60 of the pdf online.

[10] 100 aurar = 1kr

[11] Íslandsdætur pg 126
[12] Ebenezer Henderson, Iceland: or, The journal of a residence in that island, during 1814-15..., Volume 1 ‘For upwards of two hundred years, the only    Psalm-book used in the Icelandic church was.. Grallarann.. which first appeared in 1594’. A new Psalm-book was published in 1801 but the Grallarann and its scripturally incorrect old psalms remained popular.

[13] ‘ekki eftirlíking á því sem venjulegum augum sé sýnilegt’

[14] http://www.kvennasogusafn.is/index.php?page=artoel-og-afangar

 

The Progress of some Women is not necessarily the progress of the Class

The majority of Ministers in the Althing are now women. The Icelandic Parliament also has its first ever woman Minister of Finance, Oddný Harðardóttir. Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is keen we should celebrate these 'developments in equality' in Iceland.

However the Cabinet reshuffle actually has far more to do with the Social Democrats’ determination to take Iceland into the EU which is opposed by Vinstrihreyfingin - grænt, (VG) the Left-Green Movement, most of the opposition in the Althing as well generally as those whose livelihoods rely on fishing or whaling.

Jón Bjarnason of VG has gone from the cabinet, as has Árni Páll Árnason of the Social Democrats (SDP) who is also against Iceland going into the EU.

Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, the Chair of VG who was Finance minister, has been moved to Agriculture and Fisheries. The right wing of the coalition is not able to stay in power without the VG, so they couldn’t get rid of him completely and Jón Bjarnason who was Agriculture and Fisheries Minister, has been highly critical of Steingrímur.  

In a nasty little aside a former SD MP, Anna Margrét Gudjónsdóttir has said Jón Bjarnason ‘should be disciplined for voting against the majority’. Presumably the Social Democrats didn’t have the nerve to have a current MP argue he should vote against his party’s own manifesto and his constituants.

The new Finance Minister, Oddný Harðardóttir, made an election film in 2009 arguing that as everyone needs a decent working life, her party would maximise work opportunities and to do this they must join the EU. With all the European States economies in crisis, she will now preside over more public sector job cuts and rising prices. Rather than promote equality, this government will hit women hardest with more unemployment and social care thrown back on the family.

When Jóhanna says these changes will strengthen the Government, she means its right wing. The real question is what is the Left Green Movement doing in coalition with these people?