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Assignment #2

The Second chapter “The Accumulation Of Labor and the Degradation of Women” of “Caliban and the Witch” mainly talks about the period when feudalism was about to disappear and capitalism started to appear. First of all, land privatization changed people’s life. People used to be able to supply themselves, but after the privatization, people had to work under someone. Women were thought to be at home and shareable and convenient workers people were able to use at will(97). However, in the new idea of women which was constructed after privatization, they became just a power for reproduction. Around that time, slavery was efficiently systematized in the Americas while women were used as profitable reproduction. The main reason of degradation of women was the development of legal systems for making women disadvantaged. For example, women had much fewer rights to be independent. Their action was always under surveillance, and if they do anything wrong, the punishment was heavier than men. Therefore, they had only choice that was being home and accept the social system. However, there were movement against for required working home by society, and women started reading literature which was usually about women beating up men. Because of that, men were scared of women to have power, they went against that movement. She also points out that slave seem to be equal, but even in slave society, there was obvious unequality like sexism. For example, female slaves can be attacked sexually, be pregnant. Moreover, they were weaker for starvation than men.  She thinks that capitalism would not exist if women had not turned in to instrument for reproduction because capitalism could succeed owing to low cost labor which are women and slaves. I think if women’s position were equal to men, capitalism would not work, and the society now would have been completely different.