Rise of Neoliberal Feminism

The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism demonstrates how the notion of a happy work-family balance has not only been incorporated into the popular imagination as a feminist ideal but also lies at the heart of a new variant of feminism, one that has abandoned any commitment to equal rights or emancipation. This book underscores the ways in which neoliberal feminism forsakes the vast majority of women, while facilitating new and intensified forms of racialized and class-stratified gender exploitation. Given our frightening neoliberal reality, the monumental challenge, then, is how we can successfully reorient and reclaim feminism as a social justice movement.

List of contents

• Foreword


• Acknowledgements


• Introduction: Feminism in Neoliberal Times


• Chapter One: How Superwoman Became Balanced


• Chapter Two: The Neoliberal Feminist


• Chapter Three: Neoliberal Futurity and Generic Human Capital


• Chapter Four: Back from the Future: Turning to the "Here and Now"


• Chapter Five: Feminist Convergences


• Chapter Six: Reclaiming Feminism


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

About the author

Catherine Rottenberg is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics and the Gender Studies Program at Ben-Gurion University. She is the author of Performing Americanness: Race, Class and Gender in Modern African- and Jewish- American Literature and Black Harlem and the Jewish Lower East Side.

Summary

From Hillary Clinton to Ivanka Trump and from Emma Watson all the way to Beyoncé, more and more high-powered women are unabashedly identifying as feminists in the mainstream media. In the past few years feminism has indeed gained increasing visibility and even urgency. Yet, in her analysis of recent bestselling feminist manifestos, well-trafficked mommy blogs, and television series such as The Good Wife, Catherine Rottenberg reveals that a particular variant of feminism--which she calls neoliberal feminism--has come to dominate the cultural landscape, one that is not interested in a mass women's movement or struggles for social justice. Rather, this feminism has introduced the notion of a happy work-family balance into the popular imagination, while transforming balance into a feminist ideal. So-called "aspirational women" are now exhorted to focus on cultivating a felicitous equilibrium between their child-rearing responsibilities and their professional goals, and thus to abandon key goals that have historically informed feminism, including equal rights and liberation.

Rottenberg maintains that because neoliberalism reduces everything to market calculations it actually needs feminism in order to "solve" thorny issues related to reproduction and care. She goes on to show how women of color and poor and immigrant women most often serve as the unacknowledged care-workers who enable professional women to strive toward balance, arguing that neoliberal feminism legitimates the exploitation of the vast majority of women while disarticulating any kind of structural critique. It is not surprising, then, that this new feminist discourse has increasingly dovetailed with conservative forces. In Europe, gender parity has been used by Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders to further racist, anti-immigrant agendas, while in the United States, women's rights has been invoked to justify interventions in countries with majority Muslim populations. And though campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp appear to be shifting the discussion, given our frightening neoliberal reality, these movements are currently insufficient. Rottenberg therefore concludes by raising urgent questions about how we can successfully reorient and reclaim feminism as a social justice movement.

Additional text

For a relatively short book, there is a lot in The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism. Rottenberg turns her analytical eye to a range of cultural products, from the "have it all" privileged musings of Ivanka Trump to "mommy blogs" and popular TV shows such as CBS' The Good Wife and the Danish series Borgen, in which it becomes painfully apparent that in order to maintain the moral high ground in the future, "Brigitte will have to do a better job balancing family and work." It is an all too familiar pattern." - Emma Rees Times Higher Education

Product details

• Authors: Catherine Rottenberg, Catherine (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Visi Rottenberg, Catherine (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Visiting Professor Rottenberg
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.06.2020
• EAN: 9780197523773
• ISBN: 978-0-19-752377-3
• No. of pages: 264
• Series: Heretical Thought
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education