ON MARCH 22ND THIS YEAR, well-known marxist anthropologist and fighter for women's rights, Evelyn Reed, died. She was 73.
Evelyn Reed was one of the foremost marxist writers on women's liberation to emerge in over half a century. Her main works Problems of Women's Liberation and Women's Evolution (the fruit of over 20 years' study) sold widely in the USA and Britain, and helped influence the thinking of thousands of young feminists.
So popular and influential were her views that, in the past few years of her life, she visited countries as far afield as Japan, Australia and Britain lecturing and discussing her work.
Reed's interest in the problems of women's oppression was not new. It stretched back to the late 40s when, due to the stifling hand of Stalinism, the issue had virtually been killed. It was then that she began to sketch out the broad outlines of her analysis in a series of essays later collected in Problems of Women's Liberation.
Her essays sharply criticised the myth that 'biology' has always been woman's destiny and that nothing fundamental could be done about women's oppression since women will always be child-bearers. On the contrary, she showed that women's second-class status had nothing to do with "biology' but with the social system that conditioned people into 'sex roles' and could, therefore, be changed by changing that system.
against the stream. It must have been a source of great satisfaction to her when, in the middle 60s, a new generation of yourg feminists arose to continue the fight against women's oppression. True to character, she plunged into that fight from the first and was particularly active in the struggle to win abortion rights.
Reeds writings were not only valuable in explaining to young feminists the social roots of their oppression but also in combatting incorrect ideas such as 'men are the enemy'. She always stressed that women's liberation was part In those days, Reed was battling framework.
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