Occupy Feminism? Contesting the Unholy Alliance Between Mainstream Feminism and Neoliberalism

In this panel we will explore the ways in which mainstream feminism continues to be used in the service of neoliberalism. The 2012 World Bank World Development Report is entitled Gender Equality and Development. The implication is that “developing” women and girls will turn around world poverty and hunger, through the endless enclosure of pre-capitalist parts of the world into capitalist markets. How do power elites in the United States and across the world make use of feminist ideology to further their objectives of privatization, elimination of unions and welfare programs, and endless war? Simultaneously the attack on women's reproductive rights, primarily but not exclusively carried out by the Republican Party in the service of its fundamentalist/evangelical Christian base, has reached fever pitch. How do we understand this contradiction between, on the one hand, the wholesale co-optation of feminist ideas, and on the other, an all-out assault on women's individual autonomy? We will look at the uses of feminist ideology in prisons, in the “femo-nationalism” (the term coined by Sara Farris) of right-wing parties in Europe, through micro-credit and other forms of development discourse, and a number of other sites. The goal is to demystify the co-optation of feminist language and objectives, and to strengthen those aspects of contemporary feminism that link to an anti-capitalist project.