Feminism in women’s business networks: A freedom-centred perspective

Abstract

How do women’s business networks (WBNs) help to advance women’s freedom? Drawing on Zerilli’s freedom-centred feminism, our study sets out to answer this question at the intersection of freedom, feminism and work. Critics argue that WBNs promote a postfeminist view of freedom focusing on individual self-realisation and thus participate in rolling back collective, feminist efforts to dismantle structural inequalities. We reconceptualize WBNs as political arenas and argue that making claims about shared interests and concerns in such an arena constitutes a feminist practice of freedom. With an original, inductive and qualitative research design combining topic modeling and dialectical analysis, we examine the claims made in 1,529 posts across four WBN blogs. We identify postfeminist claims and new forms of change and transformation that can help to advance women’s freedom across three ‘dialectics of freedom’: conformity and imagination; performative care and relational care; sameness and openness. Our findings show that uncertain and contradictory ways of defining and engaging with women’s freedom can emerge through claim-making in such arenas. The fragility of the process and its outcomes are, then, what can move feminism forward at work and beyond.

Freedom, work and organizations in the 21st century: Freedom for whom and for whose purpose?

“…Four of its five articles report on qualitative studies into specific contexts for the expression or experience of freedom. 7 They include community agroecological work sites in the Philippines (Jack et al, 2022), women’s business network blogs (Villesèche et al, 2022), hostels in a garment production cluster in India (Crane et al, 2022), and a set of three alternative forms of organizing in the UK (Dahlman et al, 2022). The fifth article is a conceptual exploration of the mechanisms of the regulation of academic labor in the neoliberal university (Fleming, 2022).…”

“…Finally, some articles also present circumstances in which freedom for workers can actually be enhanced . Villesèche and colleagues (2022) utilize Zerilli’s (2005) theory on freedom-centered feminism to provide a lens as to how women’s business networks might encourage new feminist worlds rather than simply replicate the power relationships in the neoliberal order. Their research reveals that women’s business networks can be construed as political arenas, or places for world-building, in which women’s freedoms can be advanced through sharing inspiration and imagination.…”

“…The remaining articles offer relational and political conceptualizations of freedom derived from the contributions of noted social and economic theorists. Villesèche and colleagues (2022) build on Zerilli’s (2005) work to contradict the assumptions of post-feminism in online women’s communications networks and raise the possibility of such venues offering world-building and thus freedoms that are collective, contested, and plural. Jack and co-authors (2022) use Sen’s writings on development to propose a relational “freedom with” in their study of innovative work and organizing rooted in alternative sustainable agricultural practices.…”

“…8 Depending on how strongly these biopolitical mechanisms are felt, work–life boundaries of academics can be sharply eroded (even deceased colleagues are not immune from this, see Fleming, 2021). Villesèche and colleagues (2022) illustrate how women’s online business networks, seen primarily as venues for women to share strategies for seeking equality in the neoliberal status quo, can also be political arenas for broaching the realization of emancipatory ideas and strategies. Finally, the research of Crane et al (2022) conveys how female garment workers in hostels experience a hybrid (un)freedom that simultaneously comprises elements of both unfreedom and freedom, each of which needs to be seen in the context of the gendered nature of prevailing social and economic relations.…”

“…They may be so in direct ways, such as when individuals support each other (e.g. business networks in Villesèche et al (2022), or hostels in Crane et al (2022)), or in indirect ways, such as when people work to change regulations, collaboratively take preventive or mitigating action in the face of disasters, for instance. After all, “we .…”