How neoliberal feminism is colonising feminism
All of a sudden, everyone wants to claim the feminist label. An unprecedented number of high-profile corporate women are publicly declaring themselves feminists. The market is colonising feminist themes, it seems.
So, how might we make sense of the contemporary feminist renaissance with its very different and conflicting manifestations?
Over the past decade, we have witnessed the rise of a peculiar variant of feminism, particularly in the UK and the US. This variant has been unmoored from social ideals like equality, rights and justice. Neoliberal feminism recognises gender inequality (differentiating itself from post-feminism, which focuses on individual women’s “empowerment” and “choice” yet repudiates feminism) while simultaneously denying that socioeconomic and cultural structures shape our lives. This kind of feminism is seductive, easily digestible, and always subordinate to the requirements of neoliberal economics, but it is a fatally weakened feminism.
Yes, neoliberal feminism might acknowledge the gender pay gap and sexual harassment as signs of continued inequality. But the proposed solutions overlook the underlying structural and economic factors that contribute to these phenomena. Inciting women to accept full responsibility for their own well-being and self-care, neoliberal feminism ultimately directs its address to the middle- and upper-middle classes, effectively erasing the vast majority of women from view. And, since a market calculus drives it, it is uninterested in social justice or mass mobilisation.
The problem lies in what neoliberal feminism skims over and the behaviours it promotes as a result of these omissions. It focuses on equality before the law without paying tribute to the previous generation’s fights for legal parity and presenting the struggle for gender equality as now largely down to the individual, who must ensure that she makes the most of the opportunities available to her.
Take the issue of care work, which is still disproportionately carried out by women. Without institutional support, it is impossible for people with caring responsibilities to “lean in” the way that people without such responsibilities can. Female empowerment is impossible without challenging workplaces that consider the ‘burdenless’ individual the standard. As academic Wendy Larner has noted, neoliberalism is more than policies aimed at promoting privatisation or fiscal austerity — it is a new way of thinking about and regulating the self, with good citizens seen as “individualised and active subjects responsible for enhancing their own well-being”. In other words, it is up to you, the individual, to succeed.
This is another core flaw of neoliberal feminism: its failure to contend with hierarchies of privilege among women. While the UK promises equal opportunity, economic inequality is higher, social mobility is lower, and workers’ rights are getting worse. Many jobs women do are low-paid, exploitative, and fail to provide basic economic security.
The rise of neoliberal feminism has also led to the birth of women's organisations and communities, aligning with neoliberal capitalism and promoting individual aspirations so feminism can more easily be popularised, circulated, and sold in the marketplace. This is because it dovetails, almost seamlessly, with neoliberal capitalism. These organisations are usually unabashedly exclusionary, encompassing only so-called aspirational women in their address. In doing so, they reify white and class privilege and heteronormativity, lending itself not only to neoliberal but also neo-conservative agendas.
Sponsored by big corporations and operating with little to no internal work regulations and policies, they function as playgrounds for rich women and their subordinates, aiming solely to establish an exclusive club for privileged women. Unfortunately, within these environments, workers frequently fall victim to mobbing and bullying, perpetuating a toxic work environment mirroring the industries they claim to represent, all without any genuine efforts to change the existing status quo.
The pressing question is how we can sustain and broaden the mass feminist renaissance as resistance while rejecting the logic of neoliberal feminism. How can we maintain feminism as a threat to the many forces that continue to oppress, exclude and disenfranchise whole segments of society?
However, other feminist movements have emerged in the past few years. Feminism for the 99%, which helped organise the International Woman’s Strike is an example. These movements significantly expand the single frame of gender, articulating and protesting the different inequalities facing women, minorities, and precarious populations more generally.
These feminist movements demand dramatic economic, social and cultural transformations, thereby creating alternative visions and hope for the future. And given just how bleak the future currently looks for an ever-increasing number of people across the globe, this is precisely the threatening feminism that we need.
