How can you overcome sexism if you play by the rules?

 

Founder, We Hate Pink

 

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8 October 2022 by Rossella Forlè

Girl bosses. Leaning in. Climbing the corporate ladder.

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.

Artist: Odile Brée (http://odilebree.com )

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 judged 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, with the success of women entrepreneurs and executives being 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 the goals of feminism 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 focus 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 diverse needs and aspirations of ‘women of color’. 

“Feminism is the struggle against sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women” ”
— Bell Hooks in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Capitalism structurally oppresses, restricts and inhibits the access of marginalised individuals, minority communities, and differently-abled people by regulating their opportunities. Based on such structures of inequities it further exacerbates sexism, classism, ableism and racism. Patriarchy and capitalism are intricately linked at the core.

Feminism, on the other hand, is rooted in the principles of equity. It champions knocking down oppressive structures while capitalism, which governs production, thrives on these structural inequities. To put it simply, for a capitalist who is blindly driven by profit maximisation, it benefits to hire ‘cheap labour’. And who dominates in these low paying, precarious jobs?- unarguably, women. Why, then, should modern feminism be tied to such a system? It has an interest in their exploitation! Truly liberatory feminism must demand a break from capitalism and the establishment of fairer economic relations.

If we believe in the core idea of feminism as being about achieving equality for all within an ongoing struggle to decentralise power and dismantle the hierarchies of power that oppress women, then that also includes considerations of class – which is of course more often than not deeply tied to race, sexuality, gender identity and disability. None of that sits comfortably with capitalism, whose logic will always lead to the devaluing of women’s labour, the prioritising of capital over human life and the environment and further inequality in the name of concentrating power in the hands of the few.

But what would an anti-capitalist feminist world look like in practice? And how would we even get there when capitalist structures are so entrenched in every aspect of everyday life?

If you’re interested in finding out more, join the Women Weaving the Future-II. International Conference 2022, 5 and 6 November in Berlin to explore why capitalism has no place in feminism and what a post-capitalist world could look like. The conference is FREE.

In the meantime, I’ve compiled a list of books, articles, podcast episodes, movies, and TV shows you can dive into:

To read

To listen

To watch

  • The Gold Diggers (1983)

  • Born in Flames (1983)

  • A Place of Rage (2007)

  • Support The Girls (2018)

  • I Care A Lot (2021)

***, English, Politics, BusinessRossella ForleFeminism, Anti capitalism, Neoliberal Feminism, Exploitation, Women, Women labour, Girlboss, Bell Hooks, patriarchyComment