Is women’s struggle subordinate to class struggle?

Followers of this theory conjure up the notion that to claim the class struggle is primary means that the women’s struggle will be subordinated to it. This, however, is nothing but a caricature of Marxism.

Part of the struggle for the success of the revolution for socialism is an imperative necessity of swiftly raising the level of women to equal participation in the struggle and obliterating all manifestations of male chauvinism and male supremacy in that struggle.

The women’s struggle is not subordinate to the class struggle. It is itself a form of class struggle, especially if consciously conducted against the bourgeoisie. The struggle against male supremacy and women’s oppression is a crucially important political struggle, and all manifestations of chauvinism in an organization, and most importantly in a revolutionary organization, are a reflection of the ideology of the bourgeoisie and must be fought as part and parcel of the revolutionary struggle.

What’s involved here is the confusion of the primacy of the overall, historical character of the class struggle with the supremacy of any particular political struggle against the bourgeoisie. Marx said that every political struggle is a class struggle.

A great deal of harm is done in the radical movement in the name of Marxism by those who in reality do subordinate the struggle for women’s liberation and do practice male supremacy.

But this should no more disqualify the Marxist, materialist interpretation of historical phenomena than the presence of a multitude of fraudulent medical quacks should disqualify the theory and practice of medicine.

— Feminism and Marxism by Dorothy Ballan (Page 37 - 38)