Hester Eisenstein on "Feminism Neoliberal Tool or Fuel for the 99%?" | SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 19/11/2019

Feminism: Neoliberal Tool or Fuel for the 99%? was a seminar given by Professor Hester Eisenstein (The City University of New York, USA) at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London on 12 November 2019. Find out more at http://bit.ly/35hK5mQ

Ten years ago, I published Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World. I argued that mainstream feminism was being co-opted and used by corporate and government elites to help achieve the goals of neoliberalism, from the ending of welfare in the US to the use of women as a substitute for development in impoverished countries. Today we are living through an era of renewed women’s activism: women’s marches and teachers’ strikes in the United States; the #MeToo movement; the Irish victory on abortion; the Ni Una Menos movement in Argentina; the international Google strike over sexual harassment; and the International Women’s Day strikes in Spain and elsewhere. Are these events instances of ‘feminist class struggle’, as Cinzia Arruzza argues? I will address some of the contemporary debates over this new wave, including its relation to mainstream feminism and to Marxism and social reproduction theory. 

Hester Eisenstein is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center, The City University of New York. Her most recent book is Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World (Routledge, 2009). Her previous publications include Contemporary Feminist Thought (1984) and Inside Agitators: Australian Femocrats and the State (1994). She has taught at Yale University, Barnard College (Columbia University), and the State University of New York at Buffalo. She also served as a ‘femocrat’ in the Wran Labor government of New South Wales, Australia.