How can you overcome sexism if you play by the rules?
Girl bosses. Leaning in. Climbing the corporate ladder.
Artist: Odile Brée (http://odilebree.com )
Suppose you were a woman on the internet in the early 2000s. In that case, you pretty much couldn’t go a day without coming across one of these terms—whether it was the latest success story of a woman-led Fortune 500 company or the newest think piece detailing why the #girlboss model was the way of the future for women everywhere.
At the core of all these stories was one simple premise: if you tried hard enough, you too could win at capitalism while still being a good feminist – because achieving power and climbing the ranks of the corporate ladder was essential to the fight for equality.
The truth is a lot more complicated than that. A closer look at many of the organisations promoting this particular brand of feminism has since revealed toxic work cultures within which visions of female empowerment did not seem to include the women working for them – in addition to casually facilitating the demise of democracy for profit.
So how did we get here, and in the post-girlboss era, what exactly are we left with?
On International Women’s Day 2020, sociologist Nicole Aschoff declared that “feminism and capitalism are both in crisis.” Specifically, Aschoff argued, they’re suffering crises of legitimacy. Capitalism and the economic status quo are increasingly targets of disgust. A rigged system of global commerce pumps vast sums of wealth from poor countries to rich ones. And even those rich countries aren’t doing so well. In many of them, quality of life is either stagnant or declining.
The state of modern feminism also leaves much to be desired. The movement’s core goals — pay parity, equal representation, robust abortion rights, etc. — have yet to be realised in most places. This is despite decades, if not centuries, of dedicated organising and activism by huge masses of people. And in the few places where those goals have been realised, reactionaries are working hard to undo them.
Neoliberal Feminism
For Neoliberal feminism, or “the feminism of the 1 per cent” as Philosopher Nancy Fraser calls it, the basic idea is the same: gender equality is best achieved through women ascending to positions of power within the capitalist state and economy. To liberal feminists, the main cause of gender inequality is the stereotypes that people use to judge women, and pursuing social and legislative reform is the best way to ensure that women can finally be considered individually and on their own merits in the same way men are, within a capitalist system that means having the opportunity to pursue professional success and accrue power the same way men have.
Currently, this strand of feminism is the dominant one. And that’s bad news. Feminism and capitalism shouldn’t be synthesised because the two ultimately cannot coexist.
For the Sophia Amorusos and Sheryl Sanbergs of the world, their ability to achieve power and wealth is equal to a win for women everywhere. The success of women entrepreneurs and executives is represented as bringing all women one step closer to gender equality.
This whole idea goes wrong because it ignores the very nature of capitalism and how it necessitates winners and losers to function. A system like capitalism needs a majority of people at the bottom of the ladder so that the select few can rise to the top. Amoruso’s clothing empire doesn’t exist without relying on exploitative labour. Sandberg’s climb up the corporate ladder is only feasible if you can afford to pay other people to take care of aspects of your life. And that’s not even touching on the fact that this form of women’s empowerment only functions if you are as close as possible to the cishet, white male ideal at its centre. For women of colour, trans women or gender-diverse people, making capitalism ‘work for you’ is a lot harder, if possible.
Feminists Fightback
We should all be anti-capitalists
Feminism advocates for economic freedom, and while money equals power, we cannot guarantee that feminism's goals will be reached with it alone. Economic empowerment undoubtedly prepares the road to individual liberation, but we need to understand that capitalism promotes individualism over collective action.
Bell Hooks, known for her intersectional feminist theory, argued how focusing on striving for equal pay and claiming top jobs is reflective of the ‘bourgeoise class bias’. It fails to acknowledge and is not representative of the diverse needs and aspirations of ‘women of colour’.