Neoliberal Feminism: A Capitalist Cooptation of the Language of Liberation.

Efforts by feminist scholars to integrate gender and women’s reproductive labor into political (and) economic analysis have gained increasing prominence in the field of global political economy (GPE). Feminist GPE perspectives are not a monolith, however, as exemplified by the ongoing debate on ‘neoliberal feminism.’ Unlike their Marxist counterparts, neoliberal feminists argue that free-market capitalism is the ideal mechanism to achieve gender equality — and unlike their liberal feminist predecessors, they reject calls for legislative and political changes to rectify inequality. Instead, they emphasize individual responsibility and propose the commodification of reproductive labor and participation in the paid labor market as solutions to gender inequality (Beier 2018; Rottenberg 2018). In contrast, Marxist feminists, such as Margaret Benston (1969), consider capitalism an integral part of women’s marginalization. Correspondingly, the neoliberal feminist solution to gender inequality has been subject to much (feminist) academic criticism.

Such criticism can also be found within popular discourse. Take, for instance, the meme “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss,” a play on the phrase “Live, Love, Laugh,” with each word carrying negative connotations in reference to a particular type of ‘female empowerment’ (Abad-Santos 2021). The critiques this meme embodies actually correspond to the academic critiques of neoliberal feminism – it just uses different terminology to describe this phenomenon. Tapping into this meme, I will scrutinize the “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss” of neoliberal feminism to advance the argument that neoliberalism cannot be a feminist solution to gender inequality, as it is more likely to reinforce women’s oppression and exploitation on a global scale, than it is to resolve it.

Capitalism and Patriarchy:

What Neoliberal Feminism Gets Wrong

Benston was among the earliest scholars to integrate gender and women’s reproductive labor into (political) economic analysis (in particular Marxist thought), and her 1969 article ‘The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation’ was significant to the development of (Marxist) Feminist GPE. Following the Marxist vision that in a capitalist society a person’s value is determined by capital accumulation, Benston argued that while men derived value from their role in commodity production, women’s reproductive labor could not be sold as a commodity and was thus rendered valueless – as were women themselves. This, Benston argued, was the material basis for women’s inferior social status.

Roughly 50 years have passed since Benston’s article was published, during which feminist scholars have widely advocated for women’s reproductive work to be paid and, even if unpaid, recognized as work in the field of economics (Urban and Pürckhauer 2016; Balakrishnan and Bisnath 2012; Mezzadri 2019). Justifiably so: it has been estimated that reproductive labor accounts for 10-40% of the global GDP (UN Women 2017). However, the mere commodification of labor does not automatically translate to such labor, and those providing it, being valued. The invention of birth control catalyzed women’s (re)entrance into paid labor, and reproductive labor subsequently did become increasingly commodified (Beier 2018). In theory, this should have (largely) removed the material basis for women’s inferior social status. In practice, however, this has not held up. Not only is reproductive labor still paid only a fraction of its global economic contribution (UN Women 2020), but women’s labor remains undervalued in general. Findings indicate that wages increase when more men enter a field of work, because these jobs then gain greater prestige, but decrease when the share of women increases (Miller 2016). Evidently, women’s labor is undervalued not because of its capitalist value, but because of its social value. That is: women’s labor is undervalued because it is provided by women.

This suggests that gender inequality is about more than reproductive labor, and whether it can be exchanged for capital, alone. Thus, rather than placing capitalism at the foundation of patriarchy, I think capitalism is more accurately understood as an extension of patriarchy. Due to misogyny, women’s labor is undervalued. Their material subjugation, then, is sustained by underpaying them, which in turn reinforces their social subjugation as value is determined by capital accumulation. Patriarchy and capitalism thus marginalize women in intersecting and mutually reinforcing ways. This has damning implications for the neoliberal feminist solution to gender inequality, which I will discuss using the language of the “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss” meme.

Girlboss

What is a girlboss? The term ‘girlboss’ is a pop-culture alias for ‘the woman who has it all.’ In 2012, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’ generated a global media discussion about high-achieving women’s struggle to find a work-life balance (Segal 2019, 84). In contrast, neoliberal feminist manifestos such as Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ (2013) proceeded to tell women that they can “have it all” and find that work-life balance, if they “[…] extend market principles into [their] home lives […] [and tailor their] performances to enhance [their] chances of success” (Segal 2019, 85). The most distinctive feature of this neoliberal feminist frame, according to Rottenberg, “[…] is the singular commitment to women’s personal empowerment, while its leading voices are those of exceptionally […] successful women” (Segal 2019, 84). These ‘girlbosses’ are used as an example to tell other women that such success is within their reach, too, if they just put their minds to it (Dabrowski 2021, 102; Segal 2019, 85; Rottenberg 2018). Rottenberg thus argues that within neoliberal feminism, “[…] political critique and collective struggle to change society are replaced by psychologies of positivity, confidence and an entrepreneurial spirit to transform the self” (Dabrowski 2021, 94).

Gaslight

The notion that women can “have it all” may seem motivational, but the underlying message is also that it is their fault if they do not (Dabrowski 2021, 102). However, gender norms and biases did not evaporate simply because women participate in paid labor, and doing so does not automatically generate gender equality. Reproduction long posed a barrier to women’s participation in the paid workforce before birth control and daycares facilitated the partial removal thereof. This, of course, had an emancipatory effect: being able to earn their own income drastically increased women’s financial independence and agency. Nevertheless, the neoliberal feminist notion that paid labor will pave the road towards gender equality still suffers one important oversight: the barrier of reproduction can only partially be removed. Someone has to bear the children. Someone has to take care of them. And because gender norms persist, that someone is usually still a woman (Segal 2019, 86).

At the same time, neoliberal feminism does not challenge the capitalist system within which capital determines value, but instead validates the notion that value and equality are something women should earn through capital accumulation. However, this does not value them as women; it values them as human capital. Their value as such is still dependent on their accumulation or ownership of capital. But if participation in the capitalist market is the prerequisite for social value, then women remain at a disadvantage due to the barrier of reproduction. Furthermore, neoliberal feminism does painfully little to challenge the misogyny and gender biases underlying the exclusion and undervaluing of women’s labor. Because women’s entrance into the paid workforce was not accompanied by changing gender norms regarding reproduction, it essentially doubled their labor burden as they still carry out most household work in addition to their wage labor — without being paid accordingly (Torr and Short 2004; Wharton 1994). Women are also less likely to get hired and promoted, as employers perceive them as less reliable or even somewhat of a liability because of their (potential) caretaking responsibilities as mothers (Elting 2018; Silver-Greenberg and Kitroeff 2018; Young 2019). Such discrimination is compounded by other gender biases, with the result being that women usually work just as many or, including reproductive labor, even more hours than men, while earning less on average (Blau and Kahn 2017; Torr and Short 2004; Wharton 1994).

Women are thus materially subjugated through capitalism by undervaluing and underpaying their labor, itself a product of misogyny. Because neoliberal feminism challenges neither misogyny nor value being based on capital, women’s social subjugation further persists because they are excluded from career opportunities and derive less capital from their labor than men. Thus, neoliberal feminism ultimately reinforces both their material and social subjugation. Problematically, it simultaneously denies women’s lived realities of this subjugation, and gaslights them by holding up girlbosses as “proof” that gender is not an obstacle to their success in capitalist terms.

Gatekeep

The image of the girlboss also obscures other forms of marginalization existing on the intersection of (f.i.) gender, class, and race. At this intersection, another contradiction of neoliberal feminism becomes evident: the success of a few women is contingent on the (continued) marginalization of most other women. Put differently, the problem with a girlboss is that she can only “have it all” because another woman does not.

With regards to reproduction, finding that work-life balance is typically predicated upon the ability to delegate the burden of reproductive labor to someone else. As this labor remains undervalues and is still disproportionally provided by women (Federici 2019, 57), this does not resolve gender inequity: it simply moves the problem from one group of women to another. Indeed, post-colonial global care chains have created a new class of ‘disposable’ women according to Rottenberg (2018), who argues that neoliberal feminism produces “[…] the worthy capital-enhancing feminist subject and the ‘unworthy’ disposable female ‘Other’ who performs […] care work […]” (Dabrowski 2021, 94). Since such work is typically carried out by (migrant) women of color, this reproduces exploitation and inequality along racial and class lines (Dabrowski 2021, 94; Beier 2018).

Besides reproductive labor, neoliberal feminism inevitably involves labor exploitation by virtue of its capitalist nature (Beier 2018). Wealth as immense as that of billionaire girlbosses can generally only be achieved by drastically underpaying other people’s labor, and will thus be contingent on the exploitation of other women. In this context, the celebration of girlbosses really amounts to framing labor exploitation as “female empowerment.”

Furthermore, the success of girlbosses does not signify emancipation for women at large because climbing the capitalist ladder typically entails kicking it away once you have reached the top. Competition is the very basis of free-market capitalism and, according to the neoliberal view, what supposedly makes it so fruitful. But competition inherently creates winners and losers, and not all women can be capitalism’s winners. For winners to win, others must lose — and the painful reality is that more privileged women usually win at the expense of more marginalized women (Stiglitz 2017). The ‘losers’ of capitalism have been lower-earning, ‘unskilled’ workers, disproportionally from the Global South and communities of color, who cope with employment and income precarity, deplorable working conditions, and stagnating or even shrinking wages (Beier 2018; Dabrowski 2021; Wilson 2015; Selwyn 2014; Deaton 2013; Stiglitz 2017; Slobodian 2018). These same groups are usually also hit the hardest by the effects of climate change, which likewise has been linked to capitalist production (Harvey 2014). And as neoliberalism curtails social welfare provision (Fine and Saad-Filho 2017; Slobodian 2018), vulnerable women, such as single mothers or women whose disability limits their participation in paid labor, will likewise be among the losers, both in social and material terms.

As such, a girlbosses’ success is arguably less about work ethic, and more about gatekeeping the wealth and power she enjoys at the expense of other women. After all, other women are her competition under free-market capitalism – so why would she help them climb the capitalist ladder? Considering that her success is also commonly contingent on the exploitation of other women’s labor, it seems highly unlikely that it would translate to women’s emancipation at large — especially as both this exclusion and exploitation tend to occur along racial and class lines, thus deepening existing inequalities and intersecting forms of marginalization. Thus, while neoliberal feminism celebrates girlbosses’ success as a symbol of empowerment, on closer inspection, it reveals how neoliberalism exacerbates the material and social subjugation of (already vulnerable) women on a global scale. Girlbosses therefore do not represent progress in terms of gender equality. Rather, they exemplify how the pursuit of success in capitalist terms will not lead to women’s liberation, but to the reinforcement of the very systems that marginalize and exploit them.

Conclusion: Faux-Feminism

Despite (supposedly) being sympathetic to women’s cause, neoliberal feminism only acknowledges inequality to then disavow it (Dabrowski 2021, 102). It treats capitalism as though it is immune to patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, Queerphobia, classism, and other systems of oppression that produce inequality, and distributes the blame for women’s social and material subjugation to their subpar work ethic or lack of merit (Dabrowski 2021, 102; Segal 2019, 86). Neoliberal feminism uses the ‘girlboss’ to suggest that “[…] those who are suffering should learn how to be a particular kind of feminist in order to cope” (Dabrowski 2021, 102), and to justify the gatekeeping of wealth by blaming the losers of capitalism for their struggles. This rhetoric of individual responsibility precludes any sort of gender solidarity, especially across racial or class boundaries, making neoliberal feminism a means through which the patriarchal (and) capitalist subjugation of women is sustained and deepened, rather than combatted (Dabrowski 2021, 102).

Moreover, neoliberal feminism gaslights the losers of global capitalism by obscuring the very real harm that neoliberalism has done to women across the globe, while stubbornly maintaining that capitalism will benefit all women, albeit unevenly. Neoliberal feminism uses the rhetoric of individual responsibility and a false premise of gender equality to gaslight women into believing that their marginalization is their own fault; the result of their “unreasonable” unwillingness to render themselves valuable only as human capital. But as long as neoliberal feminism promotes the notion that women should earn equality, as well as the gatekeeping of wealth, privilege, and benefits derived from labor exploitation, it is little more than a capitalist cooptation of the language of liberation, disguising itself behind the pretense of ‘girlbosses’ as the face of female empowerment and gender equality. A minority of women thriving at the expense of the majority of women is not empowerment. It is capitalist exploitation repackaged as feminism.