The women’s question is not a natural or biological issue that has always existed. The oppression of women is a historical and social phenomenon that emerged with class society and private property. Therefore, women’s liberation is not possible only through legal changes, cultural transformations, or individual successes. It requires the elimination of the social relations that created this oppression.
Today, one of the most prominent movements in women’s struggle is feminism. Feminism has made important contributions by making gender inequalities visible and helping win many democratic rights. However, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, it approaches the women’s question in an incomplete way and separates it from its class roots. Feminism usually defines the main source of women’s oppression as “male domination” or “patriarchy.” But Marxism argues that male domination is not a timeless or natural fact; it is a product of social relations that developed with the rise of private property, classes, and the state. Therefore, we cannot separate the cause from the effect.
In primitive communal society, women were at the center of production and had a respected position in social life. Women’s historical defeat began when the means of production became private property, wealth accumulated in men’s hands, and the patriarchal family emerged. Women were removed from social production and confined to the home, which destroyed their economic independence and created the material basis for male domination. Thus, the source of the women’s question is not simply men’s attitudes, but the class society that reproduces those attitudes.
At this point, the main difference between feminism and Marxism becomes clear. Liberal and bourgeois feminism aims for women to have equal rights with men within the current system. More women in parliament, more women bosses, more women managers, more women CEOs… These can certainly be important gains for some women. But they do not change the lives of millions of working-class women who work for low wages in textile workshops, factories, fields, markets, and offices.
If a factory owner is a woman, it does not mean the female workers in that factory are not exploited. If a bank manager is a woman, it does not solve the problems of working-class women crushed by debt. If a woman leads a country, it does not stop that state’s wars, exploitation of labor, or poverty. What matters is not whether the exploiter is male or female, but who owns the means of production. This is why Marxism criticizes bourgeois feminism for presenting the rise of some women within the system as “women’s liberation.”
Much of bourgeois feminism reduces women’s freedom to individual choices and sexual freedom. Of course, opposing all forms of pressure on women’s bodies and defending women’s right to control their own lives is a democratic right. But if a woman only has sexual freedom without economic independence, it does not create real freedom. For a woman who works but cannot escape poverty, who carries childcare alone, who works without job security, and who is forced to do all the housework, sexual freedom alone is not enough. As long as hunger, unemployment, housing problems, and exploitation continue, freedom will remain limited.
Capitalism, on one hand, commodifies women’s bodies, and on the other hand, it can market the idea of the “free woman.” In advertisements, fashion, and consumer culture, women’s freedom is often reduced to the right to consume more or display their bodies. Real freedom, however, is possible only when people gain control over their own labor.
Capitalism has brought women into production but not to liberate them, rather to increase profits by paying them lower wages. While women work alongside men in factories, housework, childcare, and elder care still fall on their shoulders. Thus, women are exploited both by capital in the workplace and through unpaid labor at home. In Marxist literature, this is called “double exploitation.”
While feminism often treats women and men as two opposing social blocs, Marxism shows that women themselves are divided by class. A woman who owns capital and a woman who works in a textile factory have no shared interests. One supports low-wage policies to increase profits, while the other fights for higher wages and decent working conditions. Similarly, working-class women suffer the most from wars, while women from the ruling class can become architects of war policies. Therefore, the main division among women is not gender, but class position.
This reality shows that the women’s struggle cannot be separated from the class struggle. The liberation of working-class women is not separate from the liberation of the working class. The system that prevents women’s economic independence, makes domestic work invisible, and uses women’s labor as cheap workforce is capitalism. As long as capitalism exists, even if women gain some formal rights, the essence of exploitation will not change.
The Marxist-Leninist approach does not underestimate women’s struggles for democratic rights. Demands like equal pay for equal work, protection against violence, education rights, divorce rights, and political representation are supported. But it is emphasized that these are not ultimate solutions. Without eliminating the economic basis of exploitation, real equality cannot be achieved.
Women’s true liberation is possible only in a socialist society, where the means of production are socialized, private property is abolished, and exploitation of human by human ends. Socialism not only guarantees women’s right to work; it also aims to free women from domestic slavery by socializing childcare, elder care, meal services, and a large part of domestic work. Thus, for the first time, women gain the material foundation for real equality with men, in economic, social, and political terms.
In conclusion, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, the women’s question is not simply a matter of inequality between men and women. Women’s liberation cannot be achieved only through sexual liberation, more women managers, or some reforms within the existing system. Women’s true liberation is possible only by eliminating the economic order that oppresses them. Therefore, the women’s struggle and the class struggle are not separate; they are two inseparable parts of the same revolutionary struggle. The freedom of working-class women will be fully realized only with the establishment of a socialist society where exploitation ends.
