The political is personal: Postfeminism and the construction of the ideal working mother

Abstract

This paper critically analyses how postfeminist discourse plays out in media constructions of politician New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern becoming a mother while in office. Data for this project include Ardern's public announcements of her pregnancy, her daughter's birth, and responses to questions regarding being a working mother. Alongside Ardern's framing of becoming a working mother, we also analyze how mainstream media reported on and sought meaning around her story. We are guided by the questions: How do different feminisms materialize in Ardern's case and how do they help us make sense of working and mothering in postfeminist times? Our analysis contributes to gender and organizational literature by teasing out the tensions and possibilities that emerge for a feminist politics of mothering and working. K E Y W O R D Sfeminism, Jacinda Ardern, postfeminism, working mothers | INTRODUCTIONOur contemporary landscapes offer global cacophony of debates, representations, advice, and admonitions lobbed at and about working mothers. Working and parenting has likely never been more discussed in our cultural context than during the COVID-19 pandemic that shuttered schools and daycares, and rendered countless parents to do the simultaneous "triple-duty" work of parenting, working, and teaching (

Postfeminist individuating of a women collective and the strugglesome emergence of a relational collective feminist solidarity: The story of Kudumbashree, a Kerala state‐instituted women empowerment program

“…By diverting attention toward self‐construction, self‐disciplining, and self‐surveillance (Lewis et al., 2017) and deepening gender‐typing of work (Ronen, 2018), postfeminist discourses and practices essentialize gender and its potential to mute or disable the voices against structural discrimination and disadvantages (Duffy et al., 2017; Ronen, 2018). It may further create rules and norms of good conduct for the women who are considered free to choose their own paths of professional and personal development and may demand balancing of the two (Delaney & Sullivan, 2021; Sørensen, 2017). As one 2021, GWO special issue editorial points out (Wickström et al., 2021), an interesting focus to empirically explore this set of insights on neoliberal postfeminization, which attempts to co‐opt and undermine feminist empowerment efforts facilitating individuation, depoliticization, and structural subordination of women, is the ongoing developments of feminist solidarity within the women collective.…”

“…Nonetheless, a sense of greater access to financial resources translated into a stronger voice and an improvement in social status. As postfeminist critics argue, Kudumbashree was becoming a space where questioning structurally constructed discriminatory practices was avoided while neoliberal logics of women's self‐improvement were propagated through seemingly feminist interventions (Delaney & Sullivan, 2021; Treanor et al., 2021).…”

A Critical Analysis of Working Mothers Work-family Dilemma in Modern European Society: Using the 2021 French Film " Plein Temps" as a Window

“…The topic of negative gender stereotypes will be divided into three parts in the following section. The first is shaped perceptions, the second refers to assumptions with the filter, and the third part is the ultimate orientation [24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…Ultimately, working mothers are classified into different levels according to these settings [27][28][29]. An excellent working mother is considered to have all the freedom and all the possibilities [28]. They are portrayed as enough empowered and enterprising.…”

Postfeminism and Digital Conflict: Women’s Freedom and Power in Social Media

“…The media questioned how her position had two roles, namely the prime minister and the mother who had just given birth. With all the realities, Jacinda Ardern can become one of the postfeminist figures with political feminism as a mother and prime minister [29].…”