This post is the result of the collaboration between The A Project and RESURJ on the #365waystobefeminist campaign. Check out the campaign here.

Under capitalism’s concept of wage labour, we are bound to our jobs for survival, yet the idea is frequently romanticized in some feminist circles. This is linked to the sense of a particular kind of independence -economic independence- that comes with accessing work that pays enough to leave unfavorable and oftentimes violent circumstances. Unfortunately, this type of discourse is prevalent in the global south, where women are told they need to have a “respectable” job to be able to get a better life. In other more neoliberal-oriented narratives it is also commonly associated with “finding yourself” and having a “purpose in life.'' However, most of the jobs that womxn end up finding themselves in do not provide that sense of purpose and identity. Identity formation through a job title, profession or economic activity often leads to reproducing oppression in the lines of class, caste and race.

What makes work feminist is its freedom from capitalist patriarchy. Understanding this is a first step towards attaining autonomy over our bodies and choices. We also need to see work as feminist in how people can take control of contributing towards the societies and communities they want to live in - through their individual and collective labor, with diverse skills, experiences, passions and backgrounds. In this sense, it is not just about focusing on individual autonomy but rather, on a social and interlinked world that is built through collective control of labor, means of production and time.

As feminists we should aspire and work towards not only understanding the structures that define “work” as we know it today, but going beyond them as well. Capitalist values of productivity and efficiency have been ingrained into the concept of work, but a feminist approach to work resists and challenges this. 

Living in the global south, particularly in Lebanon where work is stratified along lines of gender, race, nationality, and sect, we cannot envision change and reform without addressing the big systems at play around work. To start, the kafala (sponsorship) system that brings in migrant workers from some African and South and Southeast Asian countries to be employed in cleaning, housework and care work jobs for very low wages and in extremely exploitative conditions needs to be dismantled. In addition, the workers should be included in the labour law of the country just like other workers, instead of being marginalized into a separate and “privatized” sphere where they can be easily unseen, abused and forgotten. 

Within the current neoliberal capitalist system, domestic work in particular needs to be deconstructed; if women were not overburdened with house and care-work chores as sole and “natural” performers, they would not have to rely on exploitative systems that import cheaper labor from marginalized and working class women to perform it for them. The idea that it is their job to perform the work, and their job to substitute, needs to be radically changed, and domestic work defeminized.

There’s also a nationalist discourse in Lebanon that associates a person’s nationality with the kind of job they can do. Domestic and cleaning jobs are for migrant workers. Construction jobs are for refugees (Syrian, Palestinian) who are also paid much less than their Lebanese counterparts. Many high end corporate jobs or prestigious charitable and non governmental organization positions are done by white European and American expats. Everything else is for the Lebanese. In light of the deteriorating economic crises, the former prime minister’s wife asked the Lebanese to take on the jobs they believe they are too prestigious for. Of course, apart from the fact that this is not how you solve crises, the backlash on this has been diverse, with mostly people saying they have not gone to university to end up in such jobs. Worth noting that many of those who come to Lebanon through kafala have secondary to tertiary education themselves.

Another issue worth dissecting is that of importing models of worker protection that are not based on workers’ demands locally. For example, as far as funding goes, organizations that address sex work in Lebanon adopt the Swedish model, and advocate for taxing the client in order to “protect” the sex worker. Of course, what they are missing is to recognize the agency in sex work. Most of the time they don’t recognize it as work in the first place, and mistakenly conflate voluntary sex work with trafficking. This framing is heavily used in national campaigning and influences the discourse around sex, morality and work in Lebanon, while ommiting the very basic step of actually asking those involved in the work about their demands, concerns, worries, and whether unionizing is something they are interested in. The white savior complex makes its appearance through the work of these missionary-like women's rights groups.

For a more feminist and just approach to work, we would need to go beyond the constraints and limits of what capitalism wants us to see as work. We can start within our feminists movements, and learn from existing feminist south-led initiatives such as  Ipek Ilkkaracan's work on the purple economy in Turkey. We can embody and try out diverse structures and accountability practices that incorporate collective and individual self care to challenge the more traditionally corporate-oriented, results-oriented, profit-oriented and overall hierarchical ways of working. We can also start by supporting unionizing and full access to labour rights, prioritizing resources to provide for workers,  and invest in having these conversations with different groups of workers. We can also strengthen our advocacy towards the adoption of an intersectional approach in drafting the different bills in our countries relating to work to include and guarantee the rights of migrant and refugee women, disabled women, trans women, and sex workers and recognize all types of violence and harassment as a violation of autonomy and bodily integrity as the ILO recognizes in the 2019 C190 Convention. 

Ultimately, it is about addressing and challenging the structural and systemic inequalities around work that the neoliberal capitalist system thrives on and reproduces. We can start to embody and incoporate these changes in our everyday practices within our feminist organizations and collectives and working towards structural change in countries, regions, and within cross country alliances.