Lost Bread: Your Household, Your Life?
A booklet from LeF (Left and Feminist), 1977.
The women's problem is complex, multifaceted, confused, economic, social, political, everyday, domestic, societal, physical, painful, psychological, hurtful, appalling, exhausting, boring, hackneyed, annoying, and so much more. The women's problem is.
It's difficult to unravel it. […] It's difficult because it's a piece of unconscious happiness and a piece of unconscious misery, because it's integrated into larger systems and thought patterns.
And yet it is necessary to unravel it […]. And yet it is necessary to pick up its loose threads, to free them one by one of their burden; to study them. It is necessary because here too, the most essential thing in our lives is at stake, because it presents itself to each of us—consciously or unconsciously—because it concerns our everyday existence.
That is how Chantal De Smet began Lost Bread: Your Household, Your Life?, the first issue of the LeF cahiers. LeF stood for Left and Feminist and was the name of a collective that would publish a total of nine thematic cahiers. Chantal De Smet, previously one of the driving forces behind Dolle Mina Gent, was its spiritual mother. She was mulling over a Flemish alternative to the Cahiers du GRIF, a feminist journal that had held a solid reputation in French-speaking Belgium (and far beyond) since 1973 as a hub for feminist knowledge production. “Every movement, every ideological current, after all, needs a piece of theory, its own journalistic history,” stated Chantal De Smet in the letter with which she garnered support for the project from kindred spirits in June 1975.
The first issue appeared in 1977, not coincidentally dedicated to “the household,” or the unpaid and undervalued reproductive work of (primarily) women. The feminist movement of the 1970s had their hands full with that theme. It contrasted the ideal image of the woman as angel of the family with the reality of often repetitive, dull, and lonely work, which was nevertheless fundamental to keeping society running and also had, or could have, beautiful aspects, for example in caring for children.
French toast It contains typical elements of feminist thought in the 1970s. The editors worked collectively, starting from discussion papers to which they referred at various points in the writing process. They examined the issue from different angles: political, economic, psychological, historical… By adding testimonies, they linked societal analyses to concrete experiences. They proposed solutions: small-scale and immediately applicable, such as childcare and other collective services, or ambitious, such as a collective reduction in working hours while maintaining pay. After all, a shorter working week gave everyone the opportunity to combine care work and paid employment.
LeF was left-wing: the situation of women was not accidental, but rooted in "this society, which is unfree, oppressive, and exploitative. The situation of women can only change in another, a socialist society."
Eight more notebooks followed between 1978 and 1981, on childcare, labor, living arrangements, art, madness/psychiatry, lesbians, and men.
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The AVG is an archive and research center dedicated to women's and gender history.
