True liberation demands simultaneous radical transformation in economic relations, power structures, gender dynamics, and forms of organisation

~  Fenikso Nigra ~

Exploitation does not recognise only one form. When we observe the reality of contemporary work, we need to understand how the capitalist system feeds on patriarchal structures that precede it and that it perpetuates with sophistication. Women worldwide experience a double — or multiple — oppression that reveals how class domination and gender domination are not separate phenomena, but interconnected manifestations of the same control mechanism.

Capitalism did not invent patriarchy, but it refined it, modernised it, and made it invisible under the illusion of modernity. The pre-existing sexual division of labour found its perfect refinement in the capitalist system. Reproductive labour — that performed predominantly by women, inside and outside the home — remains undervalued, unpaid, or precariously paid, sustaining the entire accumulation structure. While labour produces value, someone needs to reproduce that labour through feeding, caring for, cleaning, and educating future generations. Historically, that someone has been named woman.

Critical methodology, which questions dogmatic thinking, recognises that this structure is neither natural nor inevitable, but constructed through specific power relations. Patriarchy functions as a system that structurally predisposes who can command and who must obey, who has authority over bodies and decisions, who accumulates wealth. Capitalism has incorporated and perfected this predisposition, creating categories of “feminine” work marked by greater precariousness, lower pay, lack of protection, and lack of control over one’s own body and time.

Let’s look at the numbers that confirm this reality: women earn less for the same work; they occupy caregiving and cleaning roles in overwhelmingly larger proportions; they endure double shifts when performing productive and reproductive work simultaneously; they face discrimination when pregnant or mothers; they are constantly harassed and coerced in the workplace. This is not a coincidence. It’s a mechanism.

The capitalist state, often seen as a neutral mediator of conflicts, functions as a guarantor of this patriarchal structure. Its laws protect private property but not women’s bodies. Its institutions replicate hierarchies: men in decision-making positions, women in subordinate positions. Its security apparatus often protects aggressors rather than female aggressors. The state is not a tool to liberate women from patriarchy — it is a tool to keep it functional within the system of exploitation.

It is precisely in this diagnosis that a fundamental libertarian practice emerges: anarchist feminism. Not as an appendix to the anarchist project, but as its beating heart. Organising horizontally, without leaders or leadership, requires absolutely rejecting patriarchal authoritarianism. One cannot build a self-managed community while keeping half the population subordinate. One cannot imagine a society without exploitation while keeping women as property or devalued labour.

Anarchist feminism is everyday practice: women in popular assemblies making decisions about their lives; Women workers organising autonomously without waiting for bureaucratised unions; communities creating mutually sustainable care networks, without delegating to the State or capital; all genders performing reproductive work, recognising its centrality, distributing responsibilities; bodies in freedom, without state surveillance, without property, without subjugation.

This perspective does not separate “class issue” from “gender issue.” It understands that economic exploitation and patriarchal exploitation operate simultaneously, intertwined. We fight against capitalism because it is a system of exploitation. We fight against patriarchy for the same reason. We fight against the State because it guarantees both systems.

The synthesis of this multiple understanding reveals that true liberation demands simultaneous radical transformation: in economic relations, in power structures, in gender dynamics, in forms of organisation. It is not about conquering rights within the system: it is about abolishing the system.

Every horizontal organisational space that deeply recognises the centrality of women, every collective practice that rejects authoritarian leadership, every community effort that values ​​care, brings us closer to a possible world.

In the struggle for the simultaneous end of capitalism and patriarchy, we are dignified and free people!

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