Imagining new feminist futures: How feminist social movements contest the neoliberalization of feminism in an increasingly corporate‐dominated world

Abstract

Increasingly it is argued that feminism has been co-opted by neoliberal agendas: becoming more individualistic and losing touch with its wider social change objectives. The neoliberalization of feminism is driven in part by increased corporate power, including the growing role of corporations in governance arenas, and corporate social responsibility agendas. However, we turn to social movement theory to elucidate strategies that social movements, including feminist social movements, are adopting in such spaces. In so doing, we find that feminist activists are engaging with new political opportunities, mobilizing structures and strategic framing processes that emerge in the context of increasingly neoliberal and privatized governance systems. We suggest that despite the significant challenges to their agendas, far from being co-opted by neoliberalism, feminist social movements remain robust, existing alongside and developing new strategies to contest the neoliberalization of feminism in a variety of innovative ways.

Even when those struggles are not our own: Storytelling and solidarity in a feminist social justice organization

“…Nevertheless, feminists continue to negotiate the challenge posed by such individualist ideologies and develop creative practices for collectively addressing gendered inequalities within their unique socio‐political and cultural contexts (Grosser & McCarthy, ; Roces & Edwards, ). Such practices are (always) imperfect and contested, but can aid feminists in imagining and working towards a better world in solidarity with one another (Connell, ).…”

Theorizing postfeminist communities: How gender‐inclusive meetups address gender inequity in high‐tech industries

“…Expanding conceptualizations of political action allows scholars to understand how ‘national specificities can mobilize and absorb postfeminist themes and values differently’, but also to explicate the variety of postfeminist modes of political action (Mann, 1994, p. 17; see also Ashby, 2005; Genz, 2006). For example, while there has been a tendency to homogenize the impact of neoliberal feminism on women's movements (Prugl, 2015), Grosser and McCarthy (2019) show that robust feminist movements still persist, responding in innovative and strategic ways to state governments depleted by neoliberal restructuring. This shows that while postfeminism may be an increasingly compelling frame used by women and non‐binary people to make sense of gendered power relations, we are not necessarily witnessing a homogenous postfeminist moment.…”

Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements

“…For example, gender equality and women's empowerment have become popularised as corporate ethical discourses and as part of mainstream CSR agendas, mobilised in terms of competitive advantage and legitimised by the business case, namely economic arguments for improving profitability of organizations (Grosser and Moon 2005;Grosser 2016). This agenda has been limiting and conceives of gender difference in narrow, reductive terms and the rise of corporate power and corporate discourses of gender equity provides challenges to feminist movements working to resist these reductive discourses (Grosser and McCarthy 2018).…”

“…These social movements challenge individual sovereignty and direct public attention to inequality but beyond this offer the possibility of a collective, democratic ethics of openness and appreciation of self-other relations. They offer hope in bleak times and show the vibrancy of feminist activism and the political spaces and strategies used to frame, structure and enact social change (Grosser and McCarthy 2018).…”

“…To translate this further into organizational terms, feminist ethics and politics offer ways of disturbing organizations, pushing beyond constructed categories assigned to us, such as gender, race and class, and engaging in a politics of disturbance of organizational order "through critique, resistance and opposition to the self-interested sovereignty of business and to the pretense of corporate immutability in the name of capitalism" (Rhodes 2014, p. 726). Importantly, this provides a practical ethics for understanding dynamics of oppression and discrimination that go beyond narrowly defined and reductive notions of gender in mainstream business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature, such as the focus on instrumental approaches to women's empowerment, gender equality and corporate leadership (Grosser and Moon 2017;Grosser and McCarthy 2018).…”