Table Of ContentF S
eminism educed
How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor
and Ideas to Exploit the World
Hester Eisenstein
Paradigm Publishers
Boulder • London
'T
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Library of Congous Catalog! ng-in-Publicat ion Data
Eisenstein, Hester.
Feminism seduced : how global elites use women’s labor and ideas to exploit the world /
Hester Eisenstein.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59451-659-7 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-59451-660-3 (paperback: alk. paper)
l. Women—Employment. 2. Power (Social sciences) 3. Feminism. 4. Globalization. I. Title.
HD6053.E35 2009
331.4—dc22
2009000036
Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the standards
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14 13 12 11 10 2 3 4 5
Contents
e
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: How I Came to Write This Book 1
1 Globalization and Women s Labor 17
2 Women, Work, and the Mainstreaming of Feminism 39
3 Fault Lines of Race and Class 73
4 In the United States: A Political and Economic Sea Change 107
3 In the Global South: "Women* Replace Development 133
6 Islamophobia and the Global War on Terror 169
Conclusion 197
Notes 231
References 249
Index 277
About the Author 293
Preface and
Acknowledgments
$
It has taken me a relatively short time to write this final version of the book, but
a relatively long time to overcome my dread of publishing it. As a card-carrying
member of the U.S. academic feminist community, I felt that the framework of
analysis that I was developing would be anathema to many, if not most, of my
colleagues. Very often in the early stages of this project, I would have the follow
ing prototypical conversation with one of my colleagues. Colleague: “What are
you working on?” Me (hesitandy): “I am working on a critique of international
feminism.” Colleague, rising to her full height and looking displeased: “Well, Vm
an international feminist!” Serve, volley, net, as the Australians are wont to say.
I may as well warn the reader, then, that this book is something of a polemic.
Recent histories of the womens movement present the achievements of “second-
wave” feminism in a celebratory fashion, as moving us (that is, the women of the
world) rapidly and powerfully toward a better world. I want to challenge these
optimistic accounts and to raise some troubling issues about how feminist energies,
ideologies, and activism have been manipulated in the service of the dangerous
forces of globalized corporate capitalism. Hence, “feminism seduced.”
At its core this book is a critique of the process of economic globalization,
with special emphasis on its implications for women. At this writing, the dangers
of extreme globalization are on full display, with the world financial crisis that
erupted in 2007-2008. Whatever the final outcome, it is already evident that this
crisis threatens continued dramatic losses for banks, other financial institutions,
and businesses in the “real” economy, not to mention the impact on individuals
and families, whose tax dollars will help pay for the mounting cost of government
“bailouts,” and whose jobs, housing, and life savings are at risk.
I should also make clear at the outset that this is not an account of the in
ternational womens movement and its achievements worldwide. (For information
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
on this topic, I refer interested readers to the many analyses of womens global
activism; see, inter alia, Antrobus 2004; Basu 1995; and Fcrree and Tripp 2006.)
Rather, I look at attempts to use, and indeed to contain, feminist energies, attempts
that would not be necessary (it goes without saying) if the womens movement
were not a significant force in the world. In order to do this, I present a reinter
pretation of the development and growth of the womens movement, principally
in the United States but also around the world. I question the triumphalism of
many accounts, which see only victories and breakthroughs for women. I want to
paint a more nuanced picture, showing some of the relationships between changes
in the structure of world capitalism and the (nq doubt) revolutionary changes in
gender relations over the past thirty plus years.
The point of view I am presenting in this book runs counter to much of
the conventional wisdom about the status of feminism in the world today. If we
imagine the political spectrum, drawn like a half moon, where liberals are on the
left and conservatives are on the right, it is usual to consider that feminists are
on the left or liberal side of politics. In the United States, the standard-bearer for
feminist principles is the Democratic Party, whereas in recent years the Republicans
have made political hay by embracing antifeminist ideas such as the right to life.
Similarly, when the left-leaning government* of Jote Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was
reelected in 2008 in Spain, he appointed a majority of women to his cabinet.1
In this framework, liberal-left governments accept feminist ideas about a
womans right to self-determfhation and autonofny, whereas right-wing govern
ments seek td revive* an older idea of a womans place as subordinated to her hus
band within the family. It is in this context that the 2008 presidential candidacy
of Hillary Rodham Clinton made sense', along with that’of the victorious Barack
Hussein Obama. Both of these represented th£* legacy of the civil rights and the
womens movement in conventional politics (although the nomination of Sarah
Palin for Vice president by the Republicans complicated the picture).
Following this logic, most writers would prbbably argue that in this period
the major struggle, for feminists, is to counter the extreme antiWoman policies
of the’Republican Party, and the extreme antiwoman policies of fundamentalist
Christian and Islamic establishments at home and abroad. Against a retrogressive
view of womens role as subordinated to fathers and husbands, feminists would
argue for the right of women to be considered fully autonomous human beings
around the world. And I do not disagree with any of this.
But even though at one level this is an accurate picture of world events, at
another level it leaves out the realities of economic globalization. I want to pro
pose an alternative interpretation of the rise of contemporary feminism, within
the Context of global capitalism, and to introduce the idea of feminist complicity
(witting or unwitting), or perhaps a better word would be congruence: in what
ways do aspects of the contemporary feminist project aid and abet the strength
and power of neoliberalism, or free-market capitalism? To make this argument, I
want to show how the many and varied feminist struggles of the 1970s have been
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
\
selectively filtered into what I call hegemonic, mainstream feminism, of a kind that
can be readily used by people whose motives are anything but woman-friendly.\
In recent years mainstream organizations have taken up the claims of femi- '
nists that women play a major role in economic life. Consider, for example, the
following blurb for a Demos forum held in 2008 in New York City:
In 2006, The Economist coined the word “womcnomics” when it declared,
"Forget China, India and the Internet, economic growth is driven by women.”
In a three-part series it cited studies suggesting that the rapid entry of women
into the workforce has added more to GDP than new jobs for men—and more
in productivity than the technology sector. The World Economic Forum now
explicitly publishes an annual gender empowerment index as a critical compo
nent in each country's economic competitiveness. The World Bank has launched
a major initiative, “Gender Equality as Smart Economics.”2
As feminists, should we not rejoice? Does it not appear that, at long last, the
powers that be have begun to recognize rife economic and social contributions of
women? Is this not what feminists have been pleading for? Not so fast! What I will
argue is that this apparent acceptance of feminist principles is in fact an attempt
to co-opt the energies of feminism into the project of corporate globalization, an
enterprise that has been having disastrous effects on the lives of most women.
The idea that corporate capitalism has found foninism useful is not original
with me. Some years ago Judith Stacey pointed to the “ironic role second-wave
feminism has played as an unwitting midwife to the massive social transforma
tions of work and family life that have occurred in the post-World War II era,”
and to how "feminist ideology helped legitimate the massive structural changes
in American work and family xhat invisibly accompanied the transition to post-
industrialsociety in the 1960s and 1970s” (Stacey 1987,8). Internationally, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (1999) has pointed to the uses of Western feminism for the
expansion of globalized capitalism.3
More recendy, Johanna Brenner (2003) has argued that mainstream feminist
goals are endrely compatible with the economic doctrines of corporate globaliza
tion. Zillah R. Eisenstein (2007) has pointed to the use of “sexual decoys" by the
now openly imperial United States. And Kristin Bumiller (2008) has argued that
the feminist movement against sexual violence has been “appropriated” by the
neoliberal state. I want to elaborate on these insights in what follows.
The premise of this book is that we are living through what Ed Herman
calls a “counterrevolution,” “in which the governing classes of the West, taking
advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, corporate globalization, increased
media concentration and commercialization, the sharp attrition of labor organiza
tion and political influence, and hence the greater political power of the corporate
elite, have been dismanding the welfare state and noncorporate rights and entide-
ments and moving the world toward a laissez-faire ai\d dog-eat-dog—or rather
tiger-eat-rabbit—world” (Herman 2006, 1).
x Preface and Acknowledgments
My account of feminism is located in the context of the world in 2009, with
the United States the major economic and political actor, economically weakened
since the 1970s but still claiming global military and political hegemony. Arrayed
against it are the European Union, Japan, and the newly industrialized countries
(NICs); the rising economies of Brazil, India, and China; and Russia, wounded but
aspiring to return to being a major power.4 At the bottom of the world order are
the impoverished countries of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America,
wracked by poverty, war, and disease. Interacting with all of these nation-states are
the “multinational" corporations, by and large based in th&developed countries,
protected by their governments, and competing as pan of an international struggle
over market share and resources.
The fundamental goal of the developed countries is to make the world safe
for the expansion of capitalism in its neoliberal form. This is a brutal, ruthless,
and dangerous system, precisely because it is based on economic competition and
military force. But the nature of the system is effectively disguised by its multiple
engines of propaganda and cultural persuasion. Not least of these is the claim that
the United States is primarily a force for good in the world, a country that seeks
only the extension of democracy and free markets to the people now deprived of
these essential benefits. In this welter of propaganda, one central claim is that the
extension of capitalist democracy is the'best hope for the world’s women.
I disagree with this claim. Despite changes in my thinking since the heady
days of second-wave feminism, I retain from that era a conviction that the inter
national womens movement has a role to play in building a world where poverty
and exploitation can be overcome. It is, of course, nonsense to think that a small
minority of women can significantly modify the current international capitalist
order. It is, however, imaginable that a majdrity of women—fundamentally united
on their goals and the means to.pursue them-r-could indeed challenge this system,
given that it depends utterly on their labor, productive and reproductive.
Right now, however, there is considerable confusion as to where the interests
of women lie. Is the extension of the capitalist system to*untouched areas of the
world in fact the best bet for women to achieve autonomy, as April Gordon argues
(Gordon, 1996)? Or is there no such thing as a unified womens movement, or
even a set of interests uniting all women, since women in all of their variety are
so diverse and incommensurate in their needs, cultures, and consciousness as to
no longer constitute a historical subject, as some transnational feminists argue
(Grewal and Kaplan 2000)? Or do the majority of the world s women require an
alternative to corporate capitalism for their liberation? I argue in this book for
the latter view.
My approach in this book differs sharply from that of the school of “trans
national feminism" as developed by Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan. I share
much common ground with these writers inasmuch as they critique international
capitalism, as 1 do,.as a “system founded on inequality and exploitation" (Grewal
and Kaplan 2000, 2). But where I part ways with them is when they speak of the
impossibility of transcending the differences between Third World and First World
