If you look at the mission statement of any women’s studies department in the country, they talk about “gender, race and class.” That became the holy trinity of the feminist movement. But the consciousness-raising process used so effectively by the early women’s movement has been extended to race but not to class. Women talked about their experiences growing up in a gendered society as girls and the differential experiences of males and females. And when the issue of race was raised, feminists started to meet in same-race groups, with consciousness-raising for white women about white privilege. One National Women’s Studies Association conference was entirely about race, and every single participant spent a lot of time in a small group to examine their lives from a race perspective. There were groups for Latina women, African American women, Jewish women, etc. And yes, our gender identity does impact tremendously on our experience of the world, our race identity does impact tremendously on our experience of the world — and our class identity does as well.
There were also times when homophobia had its day, when everyone was examining their sexual orientation privilege. But it has never happened in any widespread way about issues of class.
The feminist movement does include class in saying the phrase “gender, race and class” and talks about it on the theoretical and structural level. But there’s hardly any dialogue on the personal level. There hasn’t been a women’s studies conference devoted entirely to class where women all broke up into class of origin groups and talked about the impact of class on our life, our relationships and our choices. The kind of thorough examination starting at the personal level, looking at the curriculum, the reading lists, and the mission of the enterprise, has happened in a serious way around those other issues, and I don’t believe to this day has happened around the issue of class.
— Felice Yeskel
I’m still grateful that my experience [on women’s issues] started from working with a group of Third World women in America. We were struggling around infant mortality in the black and Third World community. And that was probably my first understanding of the difference between classes, because we didn’t care if we could take our bras off, and we weren’t struggling for a job. My mother worked for 43 years at a union job at Raytheon. So it wasn’t like we were struggling for the right to work.
In terms of cross class alliances, the women’s movement was really, really, really screwed up from the beginning, because it was dominated by white middle-class women. It was their game. Colored woman got some stuff, like childcare access. But in terms of access to education so you could better your capacity to work, we didn’t get any of that. We got some rape crisis programs. But in terms of making big changes in woman’s lives, it didn’t, not for colored women who had to work anyway. Because we weren’t June Cleavers. We could walk with more shake in our walk. The white girls felt like they couldn’t do that. They had severe, severe class restrictions. They tried to say this is what the movement is. And we watched them move up these ladders, so a few more women were in positions of power, but they didn’t do anything for most women.
Some black women from SNCC had a newsletter in 1970 called Triple Jeopardy, which made it very clear that we weren’t struggling for the same thing as the group that became NOW, we were struggling against racism, sexism and class. That was “triple jeopardy.” Some white women were doing great stuff, but how it came out, in terms of who got what, and who got the credit, that wasn’t right.
— Attieno Davis
I am a plus-size woman in a social science graduate program. I come from a working class background and am the first woman in my family to earn a college degree. I feel my graduate student experience differs from my peers because I have a visible class identity (body size). I’ve been told by two feminist women professors as well as middle class women students that I should lose weight to gain greater social acceptance. This seems like a class dynamic to me because at the same time my identity is confronted I am reading great books by feminists about body acceptance. I feel that my body size became an issue when I expressed interest in a PhD.
— Julie Withers
I am one of very few white women who earn over $150,000 annually. I always feel I have my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, i.e., that I’m not supposed to be earning 6 figures for what I do. I’ve been without a domestic partner for 10 years in part because differing income levels always became an issue. There aren’t that many lesbians earning 6 figures. Sadly, I’m estranged from my sister (who is also a lesbian) because she believes I am not allowed to have work problems — or any problems — because I make so much money. There’s more, of course, but this is the gist of it. As a white woman over 50, it’s class more than sexuality that separates me from family and community.
— Kate Davy
Two things that impact my class experience that I never thought would: the number of children I have and my sexual identity. Who knew. My partner and I have 4 kids, which greatly impacts our ability to support ourselves. We also are alienated from people who share our class backgrounds — both childhood and current — because we’re queer. So many queer parents are fairly wealthy. We are both young and low income, so we don’t connect. I come from a working class family and my partner from a working poor family. Neither of those identities have helped us connect with other people at all. I think our difficulty in connecting has more to do with being mothers and young and queer. People who are queer and working class tend not to have kids the same ages as our kids, maybe. We are definitely seeing in the queer parenting circles a ton of doctor/lawyer/rabbi/psychologist types. They live in nicey neighborhoods and they’re older than we are. They also won’t speak to us. We are sort of sore thumbs in any social situation. A lot of kids. We aren’t that young — neither of us were teen moms, but our oldest is 13 and our youngest is 5 and we’re 32 & 34. We had kids youngish, but not as young as other people in our families. Maybe we’re between classes and that is a problem. I think if we weren’t queer, we would be more likely to hang out with more working class people (because maybe they’d have us) and be slightly less isolated. I think, also, that people are just isolated these days.
— Sarah
Being white and well educated gives me privilege that bestows on me a class identity higher than my income level.
When family child care people come together for conferences, some sleep 4 to a room and avoid eating out while others get single rooms and eat 3 meals a day at restaurants. Since many of the mover and shaker meetings happen at meals, the lower-income people are left out of decision-making.
— Kathy Modigliani
Avoidance. That’s how class is experienced in my dominant identity group. The most interesting observation that I made of this website was that there was no category for white people, or for men specifically, to identify as an identity group. Why is that? I think that these groups also experience class in a different way. Because it is viewed as the “dominant” class, it is often left out, and this in itself hinders dialogue and the ability for folks to bridge the divide. The invisibility of these groups enables them to not be held accountable by themselves for issues regarding class. It poses the idea of immunity. I think this is a significant problem. Recently I have been trying to engage white folks in discussions regarding white privilege and racism. This is so taboo- because society defines what these words mean for us, we don’t talk about it. Dominant groups create a large majority of the various forms of oppression, but they are rendered invisible in the first-person dialogues- unaccountable. We don’t hear from white, middle-class men on the topic of class here because they are a majority; yet, most minority groups place blame on dominant groups like this. So, why are we not engaging these groups in the dialogue???
— Claire Howard