Confidence culture and the remaking of feminism

Abstract

In this paper we explore how confidence works as a technology of self, exhorting women and girls to act upon themselves, and how it is reconfiguring feminist concerns. Our analysis demonstrates how the confidence cult(ure) has materialised in three different sites: discussions about women in the workplace; texts and practices promoting 'confident mothering'; and contemporary sex and relationship advice. We show that confidence acts as a disciplinary technology of self which is addressed almost exclusively to women and is articulated in highly standardized terms which disavow any difference between and among women. It is an individualising technology which demands intense labour, places the emphasis upon women self-regulating and locates the source of the 'problems' and their 'solutions' within a newly upgraded form of confident subjectivity, thus rendering insecurity and lack of confidence abhorrent. We then discuss how the confidence culture is deeply implicated in the new luminosity of feminism, and we argue that it contributes to the remaking of feminism in three central ways: 1) by continuing and promoting elements of postfeminist sensibility, yet through celebration rather than repudiation of feminism; 2) through an inclusive address that expunges difference and the possibility of its critique; and 3) by favouring positive affect and outlawing 'negative' 'political' feelings. We argue that this move, which calls forth a new kind of a 'cool' 'feminist' subject, is simultaneously political, psychological and aesthetic.

Neoliberal feminism: The neoliberal rhetoric on feminism by Australian political actors

“…Some scholars suggest that there was a deliberate conservative push to undermine early feminist gains, simultaneously acknowledging and disparaging feminism (Faludi, ; McRobbie, ). However, as noted earlier, feminism and feminists appear to be in rhetorical ascendance within policy and popular culture (Gill & Orgad, ). This re‐presentation of feminism has generated questions whether these neoliberal feminisms are new or something that has arisen from some familial legacy between liberal feminism and neoliberalism.…”

“…Calkin (2017, p. 72) suggests that, as a result of this resurgence in public conversation, ‘even the most notorious misogynists feel public pressure to express sympathy with the feminist cause, often with bizarre outcomes’. The renewed interest in feminism draws upon a neoliberal ethos focusing upon the apotheosis of an individual female subject, who demonstrates an interest in gender inequality (Calkin, ; Gill & Orgad, ). Missing, or now absent, from these moderate feminisms is a focus upon collective action and the role that structural and cultural forces play in the cycle of erection, fortification and defence of gender‐based inequality.…”

Women Who Work: The limits of the neoliberal feminist paradigm

“…Precisely because neoliberal feminism incites individual women to ‘internalize the revolution’ (Sandberg, , p. 11) and focus on themselves and their own aspirations, thus buttressing neoliberalism's hegemony, it can more easily be popularized, sold and capitalized upon in the marketplace. As the ‘f‐word’ has literally inundated mainstream and social media, identifying as feminist has increasingly become a source of pride, serving as cultural capital for celebrities and high‐profile women alike (see Banet‐Weiser, ; Banet‐Weiser & Portwood‐Stacer, ; Farris & Rottenberg, ; Gill & Orgad, ; Hemmings, ; McRobbie, , ). The rise of neoliberal feminism has, in other words, helped to render feminism popular in ways few scholars could have predicted just a few years ago.…”

“…It is in this way that Women Who Work captures and reproduces a key contemporary and neoliberal expectation that individuals — and particularly women — should never cease working on themselves in order to enhance their value. The book deserves serious attention precisely for the way that it lays bare the intensive labour — affective and physical — that women are expected to invest in themselves in order to approximate the contemporary norm of female — and as I will argue feminist — accomplishment (see also Elias, Gill, & Scharff, ; Gill & Orgad, , ; McRobbie, ; Scharff, ). Furthermore, a close examination of Women Who Work reveals that the ideal female subject is not only conceived of (and incited to conceive herself) as human capital but the self is produced as well as produces itself as ‘an individual firm’ or business enterprise, where all activities and practices are understood as investments that aim to appreciate the value of the self‐as‐firm.…”

Feminisme neoliberal: un oxímoron?

“…En termes generals es pot assenyalar que dins la sensibilitat postfeminista s'emmarquen diferents qüestions de gran complexitat i ambigüitat, com les que s'enumeren a continuació: una noció de feminitat entesa com a propietat del cos (Ringrose, Harvey, Gill i Livingstone 2013;Koffman, Orgad i Gill 2015), èmfasi en l'autosuficiència femenina (Salmenniemi i Adamson 2015), èmfasi en l'individualisme, l'elecció i l'apoderament (Banet-Weiser 2012a;, el domini del paradigma del maquillatge (Jermyn 2016;Jermyn i Holmes 2015), un renéixer de les idees de la diferència sexual natural (Gill 2011;Gill i Donaghe 2013), la re-sexualització dels cossos de les dones (Gill 2012a;, i un èmfasi en la comercialització de la diferència sexual (Gill i Scharff 2011). Cal assenyalar, abans de seguir, que l'ambigüitat d'aquesta subjectivitat és fruit de l'escenari contradictori del neoliberalisme, qüestió que abordarem amb més profunditat en els següents apartats.…”