Empowered Women, Failed Patriarchs: Neoliberalism and Global Gender Anxieties
TL;DR: The authors argue that the large-scale incorporation of poor and working-class women into global capitalism relies upon an ideology of the family that keeps women's labor "cheap" and draws support from the feminist idea that work is empowering for women.
Abstract: Notions of “empowered women,” promoted by NGOs, economists, and feminists beginning in the 1970s, do not necessitate a countervailing notion of “failed patriarchs.” However, our review of the feminist literatures on globalization, development, and migration in the United States, the former Soviet Union, and South Asia suggests that discourses of empowered women and failed patriarchs are fused in the specter of the “reverse gender order.” A presumption of this new order is that global capitalism has liberated women to such an extent that they have surpassed men who are now the truly “disadvantaged.” Drawing on these literatures as evidence, we argue that the large-scale incorporation of poor and working-class women into global capitalism relies upon an ideology of the family that keeps women's labor “cheap” and draws support from the feminist idea that work is empowering for women. Diverse nationalisms uphold the ideology of the family as central to capitalist expansion, providing culturally resonant justifications for women's unpaid reproductive work, while men are breadwinners. Thus, poor and working-class men experience a painful dissonance between breadwinning expectations and economic opportunities. We show that these tensions between ideologies and material conditions make women's responsibility for reproductive work a structural feature of neoliberalism.
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TL;DR: The authors demonstrates that Chinese feminism has drawn much attention in academe and popular media, yet its ontological roots and the politics of naming has largely escaped scrutiny, and this paper first demonstrates...
Abstract: Contemporary Chinese feminism has drawn much attention in academe and popular media, yet its ontological roots and the politics of naming has largely escaped scrutiny. This paper first demonstrates...
94 citations
Cites background from "Empowered Women, Failed Patriarchs:..."
...See Brown 2006; Cooper 2017; Jayawardena 2016; Radhakrishnan and Solari 2015....
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11 Nov 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of a Women's Centre (WC) in the North of England, functioning as a post-Corston (2007), gender-responsive, non-custodial arena for women serving unpaid work (UW) sentences and women attending voluntarily due to social and structural marginalisation, is presented.
Abstract: This thesis is concerned with the aims, operation and impact of one case study Women’s Centre (WC) in the North of England, functioning as a post-Corston (2007), gender-responsive, non-custodial arena for women serving unpaid work (UW) sentences and women attending voluntarily due to social and structural marginalisation. The former are termed statutory service-users and the latter, non-statutory service-users. Utilising a critical criminological conceptual framework that challenges the socio-economic and political arrangements that give rise to inequalities and disadvantage, this project draws upon a range of key thinkers to make sense of neoliberalism and gendered neoliberal policies. This theoretical position draws upon the work of Stuart Hall, Stanley Cohen, Jamie Peck and Pat Carlen to critically analyse the narratives of 24 non-statutory service-users, 16 statutory service-users and 7 service-providers from the WC. This thesis fills a significant gap in the literature in relation to the experiences of gender-responsive practice in a post-Corston (2007) WC from the perspectives of non-statutory and statutory service-users. Specifically, it addresses this deficit by contributing to this field through focusing on non-statutory service-users experiences of gender-responsive practice for the purposes of social inclusion, highlighting the links between the destructuring of women’s community services under neoliberalism and women’s subsequent dependency and containment within the WC for social and welfare support. Additionally, this thesis outlines statutory service-users experiences of undertaking UW within a gender-responsive WC, highlighting the tensions in merging a traditional method of punishment with a progressive gendered approach. Further adding to previous research (Barton and Cooper, 2013; Carlton and Seagrave, 2013; Elfleet, 2017, 2018; Kendall, 2013; Malloch and McIvor, 2013), this thesis evidences that gender-responsive practice mobilises a rhetoric of empowerment that fails to recognise the heterogeneity of non-statutory service-users, feminises their needs and promotes strategies of resilience that teach them to cope with their disadvantage. Also being the first critical study to explore the function of UW in a WC, this thesis highlights the surveillance, risk management and shameful practices that characterise the operation of UW in the WC. This thesis considers the function of the WC for two service-user groups within the socio-economic and political context of neoliberalism. It outlines how the WC is at once a space of punishment, surveillance, coercion and shame for statutory service-users and a space of social inclusion and coercion for non-statutory service-users. It asserts that neoliberal state reforms and neoliberal policy including Transforming Rehabilitation have placed a responsibility on the criminal justice system to manage populations of women experiencing social and structural marginalisation and have instructed the WC to promote the visible punishment of statutory service-users undertaking UW within the woman-only space of the WC.
31 citations
Cites background from "Empowered Women, Failed Patriarchs:..."
...Upholding the ideology of the family, cultural justifications for women’s unpaid reproductive work are enhanced as they are central to neoliberal capitalist expansion (Radhakrishnan and Solari, 2015)....
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...women’s unpaid reproductive work are enhanced as they are central to neoliberal capitalist expansion (Radhakrishnan and Solari, 2015)....
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07 Dec 2018
TL;DR: The study of South-South relations is of increasing interest to states, policy-makers and academics, often due to a professed desire to identify ways to maximise the potential benefits of the policies and practices developed by states across the global South as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The study of ‘South-South relations’ is of increasing interest to states, policy-makers and academics, often due to a professed desire to identify ways to maximise the potential benefits of the policies and practices developed by states across the global South. Especially since the 2010s, European and North American states and diverse international agencies have recognised (arguably especially in light of the financial crises which have led to pressures on their own aid allocations) the extent to which Southern states can ‘share the burden’ in funding and undertaking development, assistance and protection activities. As such, United Nations (UN) agencies, International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) and powerful donor states are actively promoting both the ‘localisation of aid’ and South-South partnerships more broadly as a means of promoting sustainable forms of human development. Following the expansion and reconfiguration in 2004 of the ‘Special Unit for South-South Cooperation of the United Nations Development Programme’ (SSC), the UNDP’s 2013 Human Development Report ‘call[ed] for new institutions which can facilitate regional integration and South–South cooperation.’ The Report, entitled The Rise of the South, noted that ‘Emerging powers in the developing world are already sources of innovative social and economic policies and are major trade, investment, and increasingly development cooperation partners for other developing countries’ (2013, p. iv), before concluding the ‘The South needs the North, and increasingly the North needs the South’ (2013, p.2.).
25 citations
Cites background from "Empowered Women, Failed Patriarchs:..."
...…of repressive and patriarchal legal systems that institutionalise gender inequality and violence and, for instance, criminalise same-sex relations, around many parts of the world (Abbas and Ekine 2013, Falquet et al 2010, Murray and Roscoe 1998, Rai and Waylen 2014, Radhakrishnan and Solari, 2015)....
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01 Jun 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors posit that micro finance is best understood as a global industry with traceable value chains, where value chains are vertically organized by hierarchical relations of power, and populated by diverse actors performing various forms of gendered and class-stratified labor.
Abstract: The global expansion of the microfinance sector demands new conceptual work that recognizes microfinance9s simultaneous imbrication in profit-oriented global finance and socially oriented development programs Drawing from our respective areas of specialization in Latin America and South Asia, and an extensive review of the literature, we posit here that microfinance is best understood as a global industry, with traceable value chains Microfinancial value chains are vertically organized by hierarchical relations of power, and populated by diverse actors performing various forms of gendered and class-stratified labor Our conception of microfinance draws attention to the industry9s reliance on the devalued labor of women, and the influence of class and geographic divisions on the functioning of microfinancial chains at all levels Our chain-oriented conceptualization disrupts prevailing paradigms for studying microfinance by allowing us to analyze exactly where, and under what conditions, value is extracted across multiple global sites
23 citations
TL;DR: The 2015 to 2017 outbreak of Zika generated global attention on the risk of a spectrum of neurological disorders posed to women and their unborn children—including, but not limited to, microcephaly—that came to be known as congenital Zika syndrome (CZS).
Abstract: The 2015 to 2017 outbreak of Zika generated global attention on the risk of a spectrum of neurological disorders posed to women and their unborn children—including, but not limited to, microcephaly—that came to be known as congenital Zika syndrome (CZS). Images of women cradling babies born with CZS underscored the gendered nature of the epidemic. Nonetheless, the media attention towards the highly gendered dimensions of the outbreak was not matched by a recognition of the importance of female participation in the decision-making for the control of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector responsible for the spread of Zika. Moreover, while women were the target population of the public health response to the epidemic, the impact of arbovirus policies on women was largely neglected. This paradox—the absence of gender in the policy response to a problem where the gender dimensions were evident from the start—adds to other questions about the sustainability of arbovirus control.
21 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In this paper, the Third World Woman is presented as a singular monolithic subject in some recent (western) feminist texts, focusing on a certain mode of appropriation and codification of "scholarship" and knowledge about women in the third world by particular analytic categories employed in writings on the subject which take as their primary point of reference feminist interests as they have been articulated in the US and western Europe.
Abstract: It ought to be of some political significance at least that the term 'colonization' has come to denote a variety of phenomena in recent feminist and left writings in general. From its analytic value as a category of exploitative economic exchange in both traditional and contemporary Marxisms (cf. particularly such contemporary scholars as Baran, Amin and Gunder-Frank) to its use by feminist women of colour in the US, to describe the appropriation of their experiences and struggles by hegemonic white women's movements,' the term 'colonization' has been used to characterize everything from the most evident economic and political hierarchies to the production of a particular cultural discourse about what is called the 'Third World.'2 However sophisticated or problematical its use as an explanatory construct, colonization almost invariably implies a relation of structural domination, and a discursive or political suppression of the heterogeneity of the subject(s) in question. What I wish to analyse here specifically is the production of the 'Third World Woman' as a singular monolithic subject in some recent (western) feminist texts. The definition of colonization I invoke is a predominantly discursive one, focusing on a certain mode of appropriation and codification of 'scholarship' and 'knowledge' about women in the third world by particular analytic categories employed in writings on the subject which take as their primary point of reference feminist interests as they have been articulated in the US and western Europe. My concern about such writings derives from my own implication and investment in contemporary debates in feminist theory, and the urgent political necessity of forming strategic coalitions across class, race and national boundaries. Clearly, western feminist discourse and political practice is neither singular nor homogeneous in its goals, interests or analyses. However, it is possible to trace a coherence of
4,287 citations
TL;DR: This article found that mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary, while men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent.
Abstract: Survey research finds that mothers suffer a substantial wage penalty, although the causal mechanism producing it remains elusive. The authors employed a laboratory experiment to evaluate the hypothesis that status-based discrimination plays an important role and an audit study of actual employers to assess its real-world implications. In both studies, participants evaluated application materials for a pair of same-gender equally qualified job candidates who differed on parental status. The laboratory experiment found that mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary. Men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent. The audit study showed that actual employers discriminate against mothers, but not against fathers.
1,727 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1994TL;DR: The authors explored variations in the degree to which women borrowers control their loans directly, reporting on recent research which found a significant proportion of women's loans to be controlled by male relatives, and found that a preoccupation with credit performance, measured primarily in terms of high repayment rates, affects the incentives of fieldworkers dispensing and recovering credit, in ways which may outweigh concerns to ensure that women develop meaningful control over their investment activities.
Abstract: Special credit institutions in Bangladesh have dramatically increased the credit available to poor rural women since the mid-1980s. Though this is intended to contribute to women's empowerment, few evaluations of loan use investigate whether women actually control this credit. Most often, women's continued high demand for loans and their manifestly high propensity to repay is taken as a proxy indicator for control and empowerment. This paper challenges this assumption by exploring variations in the degree to which women borrowers control their loans directly; reporting on recent research which finds a significant proportion of women's loans to be controlled by male relatives. The paper finds that a preoccupation with “credit performance” — measured primarily in terms of high repayment rates — affects the incentives of fieldworkers dispensing and recovering credit, in ways which may outweigh concerns to ensure that women develop meaningful control over their investment activities.
1,465 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a combination of sample survey and case study data to argue that the success of Grameen Bank, is particular, in empowering women is due both to its strong, central focus on credit and its skillful use of rules and rituals to make the loan program function.
1,434 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the reasons why recent evaluations of the empowerment potential of credit programs for rural women in Bangladesh have arrived at very conflicting conclusions and argue that the primary source of the conflict lies in the very different understandings of intra-household power relations which these studies draw on.
1,054 citations