Questioning Friedrich Engels’s Theory on the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in the Context of Globalization

Abstract

Friedrich Engels and other classical Marxists believe that women’s subjection is the result of private property ownership. According to them, class divergence was emerged due to the private property ownership. Therefore, every class society has private property ownership, except socialist society or proletariat dictatorship which will be created after the proletarian revolution, economic resources and private property ownership possesses to the male who represents the ruling class. According to them, that is why every class society consists of male supremacy and female suppression. This context can be conceptualized as structural oppression. According to classic Marxism, it is compulsory to fight with male dominancy and class divergences to emancipate from female suppression. Then, it leads to create class conflicts in society as well as interpersonal conflicts within the family. On the other hand, globalization expands new opportunities such as international labour migration and job opportunities for skilled and unskilled women labour. Therefore, women were able to access economic resources and have private property ownership. In this theoretical and empirical milieu, this study primarily concerns to question Friedrich Engels’s Theory on the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State with emphasizing political empowerment of migrant women of Sri Lanka in the context of Globalization. Do women have political empowerment in private and public domain after achieving sole breadwinner position of the family by migration in the context of globalization? This is a qualitative study which is based on post-positivist research methodology and ethnography as a research method. The sample of the study is consisted of 60 households of women migrant workers. They were selected by applying purposive sampling method. Further, with the aim of maintaining gender mainstreaming phenomena in the data collection process, the sample of households is equally divided into two categories such as female headed households and the male headed households. Then, there were thirty (30) female headed households and thirty (30) male headed households. Findings of the study have proven that the economic factor does not acquire timeless universal value. It depends on the factors of time and space. Though the economy is the supreme factor in the time of industrial revolution and capitalist accumulation, it does not acquire same value in every society in the world, especially Asian counties like Sri Lanka. The number of other factors such as patriarchal form of governance, cultural hegemony, institutionalized sexual violence within the sphere of family, domestic violence, elderliness vs. youngest syndrome or the concept of being a ‘’balaya’’ can be seen as the crucial factors behind the women economic and political empowerment or disempowerment in the context of globalization, except economic factors.