Maria Mies Quotes

... we should no longer look at the sexual division of labour as a problem related to the family only, but rather as a structural problem of a whole society. The hierarchical division of labour between men and women and its dynamics form an integral part of the dominant production relations, that is, the class relations of a particular epoch and society, and of the broader national and international divisions of labour.

The feminist project is basically an anarchist movement which does not want to replace one (male) power elite by another (female) power elite, but which wants to build up a non-hierarchical, non-centralised society where no elite lives of exploitation and dominance over others.

All those feminists who had hoped that women's liberation could be brought about by putting pressure on the state and thus getting more social welfare for women, or by demanding equal opportunities for women in the job market, particularly in the higher ranks of this market, or by increasing women's participation in political and other decision-making bodies, find their expectations shattered. They have to realize today that the fundamental democratic rights, the claim to equality and freedom, are also fair-weather rights, as far as women are concerned, and that these rights, in spite of the rhetoric of their universality, are suspended when the accumulation needs of capital require this.

The division of the world which followed defined certain parts of the world as 'nature', that is, as savage, uncontrolled and, therefore, open for exploitation and civilizing efforts… the process of naturalization' did not affect only the colonies as a whole and women of the working class the women of the bourgeoisie also were defined into nature as mere breeders and rearers of the heirs of the capitalist class. But in contrast to the African women who were seen as part of 'savage' nature, the bourgeois women were seen as 'domesticated'
nature.