From Unhappy Marriage to Dangerous Liaison: Feminism, Neoliberalism and Social Movements

At a time when neoliberal feminism has been receiving increasing attention as a field of research, the debates over the historical dynamics of neoliberalism’s use of feminist demands and discourses are heating up. in this article, we will look at the arguments on the changes of the demands, forms of organization and anti-systemic character of feminist struggle. having received a good amount of reaction from the feminists, these discussions are both politically and theoretically important. in the first section, we will analyze the contradictory results neoliberal capitalism has created in women’s life in terms of modes of employment and changing gender myths. the second section addresses the different arguments and conceptualizations on the relationship between feminism and neoliberalism. we will refer to the texts criticizing these conceptualizations methodologically and politically on the one hand, and comparatively analyze studies on the historical development and contemporary dynamics of feminism in turkey, india and latin america on the other. in the last section, we will refer to a recent approach that conceptualizes neoliberalism as a social movement from above and explains the ways it relates to different social movements from below in an analytical framework. we will thus suggest to rethink the current debate within feminism in the wider context of social opposition in neoliberalism.