Feminism, women’s movements and women in movement

IDS Bulletin, 2009

There recently has been an avalanche of critiques of the way in which feminism has gone to bed with neoliberal capitalism and become an instrument of governmentality. In this paper, I look at these phenomena as processes of a ‘neoliberalisation of feminism'. I illustrate such neoliberalisation by introducing women's empowerment projects run by transnational consumer products companies, typically in partnership with public development actors. Under the label of ‘corporate social responsibility', these companies invest in women in their supply and marketing chains, seeking to empower them within a neoliberal rationality of government. The paper is an effort to go beyond the critiques of feminism as co-opted. Rather than inventing new feminisms or taking a break from feminism – as some have suggested, I propose that it is more fruitful and necessary to examine, in concrete contexts, the way in which select feminist movement ideas are being integrated into neoliberal rationales and logics, what is lost in the process and what is perhaps gained.

Dialogues in Critical Management Studies, 2017

Radical feminist theory and practice has actively questioned power relationships between men, women and people of color as a cornerstone of capitalist development since the 1970s while demonstrating the differential impact of such inequality generating structures and relationships on lives and bodies. Their argument about the process of social reproduction and, especially, the reproduction of labor-power both achieved through the dispossession of the female and (colonial) body and the expropriation of their work (Federici, 2004), is acutely relevant to the analysis of the consequences of the unfolding Global Financial Crisis. Yet the crisis can be a motivating force for changing the established power relations. Using three different cases studies of female initiatives aiming to counteract the imposition of neoliberal attack on their livelihoods in crisis stricken Greece, the chapter examines how the existing experience of feminist thinking and activism from within and outside of academia, can contribute to the cultivation of affective embodied relations, and building upon the idea of 'feminist solidarity' (Mohanty, 2003), in addressing the challenges of the crisis and post-crisis policies.

European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 2014

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Nancy Fraser's book is a collection of essays written from 1985 to 2010 by the American socialist feminist philosopher and critical theorist. It is a rich and complex text that aims at dissecting the "drama in three acts" that according to the author is the thread of second-wave feminism. If act one is the moment when the feminist movement joined radical movements to transform society through uncovering gender injustice and capitalism's androcentrism, in act two Fraser highlights with regret a switch from redistribution to recognition and difference and a shift to identity politics that risk to support neoliberalism in its efforts to build a free market society. In act three, still unfolding, the problem of justice is reframed and the relationships between a feminist movement meant to be radical and the changes in act in present times has the potential to open new unpredictable scenarios. This is an important contribution because it provides a clear frame to rethink issues related to labour, emancipation, identity, rights claims at the core of political demands of justice in the contemporary context of neoliberism. The historical phases of the recent feminist movement are retraced through its critical tangles in a constant debate with political theory.

Shamim Meer (2013): Feminist contributions, challenges and claims, Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity, DOI:10.1080/10130950.2013.798958

This Article highlights key contributions of second wave feminism, arguing that these are of relevance today, as we struggle to deal with questions of social justice within a context of increasing poverty and inequality. I look at feminist understandings of expanded social justice which highlighted crucial links between the economic, political and the cultural, and which stressed that the personal was political. I look at feminist strategies which stressed women’s agency and the need for separate women’s movements even as feminist women challenged men alongside whom they worked in trade unions, liberation movements and radical social movements. I look at how feminist struggles have fragmented over the decades alongside an increasing hegemony of economic and political neoliberalism, and the demobilisation of emancipatory movements. While women made gains within state institutions and the United Nations (UN) system in the 1990s, alongside these gains was the co-option and depoliticisation of feminist concepts forged in the throes of struggle of the earlier decades. Women’s agency too came under threat and was challenged as men’s movements came to be promoted as vehicles for gender equality. I argue that while men can play a vital role in struggles for gender equality it is women’s movements that need to be advanced and supported as key actors in repoliticising feminism today.

Gender and Society, 2018

Neoliberalism has been one of the most used concepts as a short-cut reference for the growing socioeconomic inequalities over the past two decades, which dramatically worsened in the aftermath of the 2008 finan- cial crisis. In framing the edited volume Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State: Inequality, Exclusion, and Change, Fernandes carefully examines the term neoliberal in order to avoid ahistorical uses of the term and chal- lenges the term becoming an overdetermined and empty signifier that presumably explains everything (chapter one). Fernandes conceptualizes neoliberalism as an extension of long-standing historical processes and a useful analytical marker of discontinuity.

2020

Neoliberalism, which is the dominant economic and political paradigm, is associated with trade liberalization, deregulation, austerity, and precariarization of the labour market. While the neoliberal and feminist logics may seem incompatible, there are several ways in which feminist movements can accidentally collude with neoliberalism. Nancy Fraser describes this as “the dangerous liaison between feminism and marketization.” This thesis aims to contribute to the debates around Fraser’s charge of feminist co-optation, and examines if feminist networks in the Global South are susceptible to any degree of complicity with neoliberalism. I have analyzed the campaigns and activism of two major feminist networks from the Global South — Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM), and Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) to see if they have been successful in resisting any form of collusion with neoliberalism. In order to do so, I conducted theory-driven participant observation, supplemented with analysis of academic and grey literature, at the 2018 World Social Forum in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. AFM’s Campaign Against Fundamentalisms faces the issue of lapsing into the “problem of displacement” as they tend to focus on cultural issues, while sidelining the economic ones. However, while moving beyond the “problem of displacement,” their “Our Bodies Our Territories” campaign continues to operate within an ultimately problematic Westphalian nation-state framework. While DAWN does conduct an intersectional analysis, it adopts an “add and stir” approach, and fails to make adequate connections between the neoconservative cultural and neoliberal economic forces. This thesis attempts to provide some lessons and strategies that feminist networks, and the WSF in general, can adopt in the face of neoliberal, and other related crises such as the rise of right-wing authoritarian governments, and the global COVID-19 pandemic.

European Journal of Politics and Gender., 2018

This article reviews contemporary academic debates about feminist organising in and against neoliberalism, which we see as structured by a co-optation–resistance dichotomy. We outline three narratives: a high-profile 'strong' co-optation thesis; a more nuanced co-optation discourse; and an emergent counter-narrative of resistance. While sympathetic to the latter two, we critically unpack the account of neoliberalism, of feminist protagonists and of where feminist activism takes place in all three. We sketch out ways in which neoliberalism and the 'who' and 'where' of feminism might be considered differently, and argue overall for the need to move beyond the co-optation–resistance dichotomy.