Reproduction versus production leads to many levels of importance to a society. Strictly on a surface level, one strives to survive. This means that basic, every-day needs must be accomplished. So, productive labor (male dominated) assumes a vital, more essential position than reproducing, which has a long-awaiting fulfillment of needs. Production fuels the patriarchal society and in turn creates the higher valuing of producing males over reproducing females. .
Once the foundation of the struggle of the sexes is understood, it is easier to recognize further hindering layers of oppression. Colonialism, for example, which mostly concerns economic gain, draws its power from the state-occupied men who fuel the economy. Therefore, men are held more responsible for the prosperity attained through moneymaking at any specific time. The push for production calls for harsh labor conditions for many women and small children. State authority in colonialism also promotes capitalism, where modes of production assume a hierarchical position. Again, we are forced to analyze the notion of production and that it is, indeed, a strictly masculine term. If men handle all the modes of production in a society, and the society has been infiltrated with colonial implications, than an undermining of what exactly it is that women accomplish is inevitable. Also, since women were not allowed to generate cash income, whatever labor they put into the state was lessened. Arat recalls three main strategies of gender relations that reflect colonialism as well. In most Third World countries, traditionalism called for the subjugation of women through suppressive practices such as genital mutilation as a reflection of a rejection of Western practices. Next, those countries which followed Westernization were adopting a system lacking equality of women in the work force and state. Lastly, the socialist revolutionary strategy brought in liberation groups for women and rejected female labor inequality.
