Theorising feminist organising in and against neoliberalism: beyond co-optation and resistance?

Abstract

This article reviews contemporary academic debates about feminist organising in and against neoliberalism, which we see as structured by a co-optation–resistance dichotomy. We outline three narratives: a high-profile ‘strong’ co-optation thesis; a more nuanced co-optation discourse; and an emergent counter-narrative of resistance. While sympathetic to the latter two, we critically unpack the account of neoliberalism, of feminist protagonists and of where feminist activism takes place in all three. We sketch out ways in which neoliberalism and the ‘who’ and ‘where’ of feminism might be considered differently, and argue overall for the need to move beyond the co-optation–resistance dichotomy.

The ‘Populist’ Right Challenge to Neoliberalism: Social Policy between a Rock and a Hard Place

“…Nancy Fraser (2009) demonstrated the ways in which ‘second wave feminism’, in its far‐reaching critique of the patriarchal character of post‐World War II state‐managed capitalism, was accommodated and used to extend rights to women that facilitated their participation in labour markets and patterns of social reproduction consistent with the neoliberal project. Other feminist theorists and social scientists dispute such an interpretation, either by underlining gains of women in the process or insisting on the deleterious impact of neoliberalism on women and the feminist cause (Eschle and Maiguashca, 2018; Wilson, 2015; Yoo, 2011). However, the point is that the decades of neoliberal dominance saw a widespread increase in women's participation in the workplace, the development of microcredit programmes that shifted women's position in the power dynamics of households, programmes for women to access family planning and new legal measures (of course differentially achieved across countries) to formally target sexual harassment, gender discrimination in the workplace and violence against women (World Bank, 2019).…”

“Drawing the line” and other small-scale resistances: exploring agency and ambiguity in transnational feminist and queer NGOs

“…Fourth, researchers have addressed understandings of neoliberal co-optation and complicity in feminist and queer organizing and scholarship. While some scholars have taken issue with what they understand as a dichotomous understanding of feminist politics as either co-opted by or resistant to neoliberalism (Eschle and Maiguashca 2018), others have highlighted the complicities that characterize feminist and queer engagements transregionally (Alvarez 2009; de Jong 2017; de Jong and Kimm 2017) and across multiple scales (local, national, transnational) (Roy 2014).…”

“…In this article, I focus on this ambiguous character of NGOs. However, although I pay attention to NGO agency, I avoid reinstating a dichotomy between co-optation and resistance (Eschle and Maiguashca 2018) by attending to the ambiguities, the "slips and slides," of struggles for gender and sexual justice in neoliberal times (Newman 2014, 3292; see also Rose 1999). I use Newman's (2014) notion of "landscapes of antagonism" to highlight that NGO actors are not simply "either agents of or resisters to neoliberalism" but ambiguously positioned in contexts of resistance cut across by multiple political projects (Newman 2014, 3300).…”

Politics of Engagement: Gender Expertise and International Governance

“…Striedinger (2017) suggests tracing the links between micro‐level processes, organizational procedures and larger societal structures. Eschle and Maiguashca (2018) affirm the need to build a multilayered analysis that reconceptualizes feminism and neoliberalism in a less monolithic manner by disaggregating multiple and ambiguous trajectories. Similarly, de Jong and Kimm (2017) push us to apply a nuanced and structured interrogation of what exactly happens in processes grouped under co‐optation.…”