Neoliberal Governmentality and the Retreat from Gender Equality

Abstract

Feminism is outmoded. Or so it would seem in the academy, where feminism is outflanked by issues of globalization and localization, sexuality and identity, and politics. Where does feminism’s continuing relevance stand: as a theory, as praxis, or as a rallying cry? The chapters in this book cover a wide range of issues such as feminist engagement with law, sexuality, and queer politics; the idea of freedom and equality in the neoliberal frame; and postcolonial feminism. Well-known feminist scholars like Brenda Cossman, Ratna Kapur, Vasuki Nesiah, and Margaret Thornton, among others, come together to critically assess feminist legal theory and politics, while also engaging currents of feminist theory and practice such as ‘subordination’, ‘dominance’, ‘governance’, and ‘cultural’ and ‘carceral’ feminism. This work critiques narrow feminist paradigms that associate sex/gender with women’s subordination, deem narrow feminist paradigms that associate sex/gender with women’s subordination, and legitimize neoliberal and neoconservative projects instead of questioning them. It aims to generate a compelling sense of urgency to resist and challenge the strong influence of such strands in feminist thinking. With its adulation of the market, neoliberalism favours competition, the private accumulation of wealth and promotion of the self. The shift away from state responsibility for securing distributive justice to the privileging of individual and corporate freedom has contributed to gender in-equality and the evisceration of equality. The globalization of capitalist production with its constant search for ever cheaper sources of labour and new markets has exacerbated struggles for gender justice, albeit not without its contradictions. Feminist scholars have accorded less attention to the rise of religious fundamentalism—also a global movement—out of a misplaced deference for individual free choice. This chapter argues that these iterations of globalization have effectively combined to contribute to the construction of equality as cumbrous and outdated. The focus will be on western democratic liberalism where freedom and equality are constantly in tension. While feminist reliance on the state is notoriously fickle, the revival of the patriarchal imperative in the name of freedom induces a sense of melancholia as, this time, we appear to have encountered an aporia.