![]() ![]() As women have poured into labour markets around the globe, state-organised capitalism's ideal of the family wage is being replaced by the newer, more modern norm – apparently sanctioned by feminism – of the two-earner family. After all, this form of capitalism relies heavily on women's waged labour, especially low-waged work in service and manufacturing, performed not only by young single women but also by married women and women with children not by only racialised women, but by women of virtually all nationalities and ethnicities. Feminist criticism of that ideal now serves to legitimate "flexible capitalism". One contribution was our critique of the "family wage": the ideal of a male breadwinner-female homemaker family that was central to state-organised capitalism. On the contrary, we ourselves contributed three important ideas to this development. Compatible with either of two different visions of society, it was susceptible to two different historical elaborations.Īs I see it, feminism's ambivalence has been resolved in recent years in favour of the second, liberal-individualist scenario – but not because we were passive victims of neoliberal seductions. Second-wave feminism was in this sense ambivalent. In a first scenario, it prefigured a world in which gender emancipation went hand in hand with participatory democracy and social solidarity in a second, it promised a new form of liberalism, able to grant women as well as men the goods of individual autonomy, increased choice, and meritocratic advancement. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the movement for women's liberation pointed simultaneously to two different possible futures. Second-wave feminism emerged as a critique of the first but has become the handmaiden of the second. The state-managed capitalism of the postwar era has given way to a new form of capitalism – "disorganised", globalising, neoliberal. What lies behind this shift is a sea-change in the character of capitalism. A perspective that once valorised "care" and interdependence now encourages individual advancement and meritocracy. A movement that once prioritised social solidarity now celebrates female entrepreneurs. Where feminists once criticised a society that promoted careerism, they now advise women to "lean in". That would explain how it came to pass that feminist ideas that once formed part of a radical worldview are increasingly expressed in individualist terms. In a cruel twist of fate, I fear that the movement for women's liberation has become entangled in a dangerous liaison with neoliberal efforts to build a free-market society. ![]() ![]() I worry, specifically, that our critique of sexism is now supplying the justification for new forms of inequality and exploitation. But lately I've begun to worry that ideals pioneered by feminists are serving quite different ends. A s a feminist, I've always assumed that by fighting to emancipate women I was building a better world – more egalitarian, just and free. ![]()
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