Empowered Women, Failed Patriarchs: Neoliberalism and Global Gender Anxieties

Abstract

Notions of "empowered women," promoted by NGOs, economists, and feminists beginning in the 1970s, do not necessitate a countervailing notion of "failed patriarchs." However, our review of the feminist literatures on globalization, development, and migration in the United States, the former Soviet Union, and South Asia suggests that discourses of empowered women and failed patriarchs are fused in the specter of the "reverse gender order." A presumption of this new order is that global capitalism has liberated women to such an extent that they have surpassed men who are now the truly "disadvantaged." Drawing on these literatures as evidence, we argue that the large-scale incorporation of poor and working-class women into global capitalism relies upon an ideology of the family that keeps women's labor "cheap" and draws support from the feminist idea that work is empowering for women. Diverse nationalisms uphold the ideology of the family as central to capitalist expansion, providing culturally resonant justifications for women's unpaid reproductive work, while men are breadwinners. Thus, poor and working-class men experience a painful dissonance between breadwinning expectations and economic opportunities. We show that these tensions between ideologies and material conditions make women's responsibility for reproductive work a structural feature of neoliberalism.In her popular article in The Atlantic, Hannah Rosin (2010) asks, "What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men?" She gathers convincing evidence, primarily from the United States (U.S.), but also from around the world that points to a new reality: the end of men. She argues that the era of male dominance is ending and that a "role reversal," already consolidated painfully in the American working class, is working its way into every class in society. The argument that Rosin articulates has resonated with a large audience in the U.S. Surprisingly, both author Cinzia Solari, in her study of post-Soviet migration to Europe and the U.S., and author Smitha Radhakrishnan, in her study of microfinance in India and the U.S., found that similar ideas resonated with the informants in both of our ethnographic studies and in the gender literature specific to our regions. Why might it be that in such historically and culturally distinct areas of the world, the economic "empowerment" of women is linked to the downfall of men?The emergence of a discourse of "women's empowerment" promoted by NGOs and elite feminists does not necessitate a discourse about "failed patriarchs." Yet our review of the literature on gender in three sites -the U.S., the former Soviet Union (FSU), and South Asia -reveals that notions of "empowered women" and "failed patriarchs" have been fused to articulate what we are calling a "reverse gender order." The discourse of a "reverse gender order" suggests that global capitalism has "empowered women" to such an extent that they have surpassed men who, as "failed patriarchs," are now the truly "disadvantaged."...

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