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Addition to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Marxist Feminist approach to Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby Decision

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. resulted in court recognition of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (Indiana), which allowed employers to exercise their religious freedom in what health services they provide to their employees. This directly contradicted the contraceptive mandate put in place under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Thus, female employees were required to seek and pay for outside health care coverage if they wished to have access to Birth control. Given this decision, a marxist feminist perspective would link the rise of women's subordination to the rise of capitalist structures in which women are required to seek out and pay for further health coverage, thus positioning them in a more vulnerable identity.

Marxist Feminism

Marxist and Socialist feminism are closely related and both rely on three main points of analysis: materialist determinism, labor and capital, and family structure. They use the framework of these institutions, structures, and systems to dissect the way power and privilege operate to maintain a patriarchal structure of power in the United States.

Materialist Determinism

Marxist Feminists theorize that culture and society are rooted in material and economic conditions. Therefore, social organizations are understood to be rooted in the need for economic production. The capitalistic interests of the ruling class create a relationship of domination over the ruled class, or the proletariat. Marxist feminists associate women with the proletariat and men with the ruling class, or bourgeoisie. In terms of the Hobby Lobby case marxist feminists would then use this materialist determinism to assume that capitalistic motivations are behind the court decision. Those in power, the corporations, are able to determine the conditions of those they rule over, the female employees. The ruling law has the power to decide that the corporation can be counted as a person, and that the corporation's values take precedence over the needs and values of the people in its control. Thus, requiring women to work outside the dominant economic structures in order to attain care that they find essential. However, this care does not exist within the framework and expectations of needs set forth by the corporation. In addition, this lens speaks to the reproductive control Hobby Lobby has over its employees through this decision. By disallowing birth control they are placing an assumption of required reproduction on their employees. Women are expected to have children, leave the workforce, and raise these children to become contributing members of the future workforce. In this expectation also comes the assumption that women want to reproduce, and not doing so is morally wrong and abnormal.This expectation severely limits women's social and economic freedoms to be independent and have control over their bodies' capabilities to reproduce. Some marxist feminists would then argue that job separation by sex is perpetuated through capitalism as exemplified in the Hobby Lobby case, which inherently separates individuals based on reproductive capabilities. This in turn perpetuates patriarchal structures in capitalist systems where men directly benefit economically from work done outside the home. It underscores heteronormative relations with men as breadwinners and women as primarily mothers, adding a secondary income or as homemakers.

These reproductive patriarchal politics can then be related back to feminist theorists like Gayle Rubin, who incorporate marxist feminism into their work. Rubin theorizes that a capitalist structure relies on and is perpetuated by kinship systems. Kinship systems work to maintain patriarchy through the commodification of the female body and via the maintenance of reproductive heterosexual relationships. These systems rely on the division of people based on gender to produce capital in the form of labor done outside the home by men. The capital produced here is then used in exchange for the women trafficked within the gift economy and kinship systems. This system would then be disrupted by women working outside the home to support themselves and/or their families. However, decisions like Hobby Lobby work to limit said disruption and maintain structures of power in a patriarchal society.

Labor and Capital

The role of the worker is further outlined by marxist feminists' interpretations of labor and capital. Marx theorized the concept of alienation. Alienation is the process which occurs when ones labor is made separate from the capital they help produce within industrial capitalism. Workers are not participants in their work, but rather just pieces of the larger structures that create capital. In this relation, humans become commodities within a larger structure of industrial capitalism. Early Marxists argued that capitalist structures worked to draw women into the wage labor force, which would prove problematic for the sexual division of labor. However, contemporary Marxists have argued that all aspects of our lives contribute to the capitalist structure, both paid and unpaid labor. Through this lens, Marxist feminists would then interpret the Hobby Lobby decision as the lack of recognition of human workers, particularly female workers. Corporations are able to distance themselves from those who work within their system to create capital for them. Thus, there is no obligation to recognize their needs such as access to birth control that can be considered part of the private sector. Women are denied access to birth control in order to maintain the structure in which women are required to do the work in the home, and to produce new laborers. The work done in the home is considered secondary to the primary labor done outside the home, so it requires no wage. Marxist feminists would argue that reproductive labor is inextricably linked to labor and capital; as reproduction acts as the production of new laborers for the future workforce.

Family Structure

Marx has argued that the family was the first form of ownership of one person by another. The husband's ownership over the wife creates an institution of private property. Thus, a woman's labor in the home exists as private production and has no monetary reward. This creates a significant separation between the private and the public realm. In today's society women have entered into the industrial capitalistic workforce. Yet, as feminist Mariarosa Dalla Costa argued, being able to enter into the system of public production will not end women's alienation. Early Marxists, such as Engels, argued that women entering into the public workforce would create equality between genders as women could become economically independent. However, this thought ignores the way that politics of gender police the work done within the home as women are still expected to bear the the weight of child rearing. Because sexism predates capitalism, a woman working outside the home is not necessarily exempt from her gendered obligation to housework; thus, women are still inherently tied to the private sphere and the work done there requires no monetary wage. In addition, women's contribution through reproductive labor is tied to the home where new laborers are produced. Marxist feminists would then argue that the Hobby Lobby decision further ties women to the private sphere, as the control of their bodies is separated from the health care that is provided by corporations. Further, the decision to not provide birth control limits women's ability to work outside the home, as their ability to create new laborers within the home is prioritized over the work they could do for the cooperation outside the home.

Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminism argues that equality can be achieved through women gaining access to the same positions as men, as women and men, in this view, are inherently equal. Societal structures, however, have created difference. In this view, women entering the workforce would achieve equality, and the eventually end the wage gap. However, this does not take into account the ways in which patriarchy works to maintain a gendered inequitable social order, because women cannot simply leave the expectations for labor they have in the home. This is perpetuated by class dynamics that may require the unpaid labor done in the home to be done alongside paid labor outside the home. In addition, it ignores the possibility of policy like Hobby Lobby, which further restrict reproductive freedom putting in its place policies that reinscribe women's labors as that of child bearers and rearers first and foremost, resorting a public-private split of labor.

Equal Rights Amendment

Liberal feminists, and others with similar theorization, are on the side of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which states that it works to overcome the discrimination that occurs within the workplace on the basis of sex. It specifically targets discrimination that is based on the reproductive capabilities of women. If such an amendment were instituted the Hobby Lobby decision may become invalid, as the decision creates unequal access to health care on the basis of sex. However, feminists who believe that equality needs to be achieved through more than just the fight against material inequality, like nineteenth century cultural feminists, argued that the ERA is not the ultimate solution. Nineteenth century cultural feminists argue for protective legislation specific to the inherent needs of women.

Marxist feminist would argue that the ERA could benefit women, as it may lead to more equal access to participation in the production of capital and financial support outside the home. However, through their theorizations it would not completely overcome the patriarchal structures that maintain the capitalist system. The ERA does address pregnancy discrimination and discrimination based on pregnancy leave. However, it does not directly insert policies that could overcome the issue of unpaid and undervalued work being done in the home. Finally, it does not overcome the social structures of kinship and reproduction that perpetuate the division of labor. However, it gives women the legislation to back claims of discrimination that have come about because of this unequal social order. The work of feminist theorists could be incorporated in the implementation of the ERA to ensure it is most effective in addressing discrimination.

The ERA also has the potential to change the way discrimination based on identity is handled on a federal level. Given the infrastructure it would provide at a federal level, the ERA could work as a resource for any person who may feel they are being discriminated against based on their identity, even if it were not directly related to their gender identity. It would do this in that it could set a precedent for the way in which legislation can work to protect bodily autonomy and equality.