"TIME FOR A FEMINISM OF THE 99 PERCENT"

Nancy Fraser says that getting more women in corporate boardrooms is the feminism of the one percent and that its time for a feminism of the 99 percent.

IN MARCH the Minister for Women, Julie Ann Genter, complained that there not enough women sitting around the tables of New Zealand's corporate boardrooms. She went on to suggest that it was time for some of the 'old white men' to vacate their seats and allow more women to join the corporate ranks.

US.academic and writer Nancy Fraser has written extensively on how feminism has become entangled with neoliberalism. She has traced how feminist ideas that once formed a radical worldview have become increasingly accommodating and accepting of neoliberal capitalism. In one article she observes:

"Where feminists once criticised a society that promoted careerism, they now advise women to "lean in". A movement that once prioritised social solidarity now celebrates female entrepreneurs. A perspective that once valorised "care" and interdependence now encourages individual advancement and meritocracy."

She has gone on to describe liberal feminism as the "handmaiden of capitalism" and argues that "feminism is not simply a matter of getting a smattering of individual women into positions of power and privilege within existing social hierarchies. It is rather about overcoming those hierarchies.....Cracking the glass ceiling is the feminism of the one percent. Now we need the feminism of the 99 percent.'

in this short video produced by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in New York, Nancy Fraser explains why the days of feminism pitting itself against socialism are now over.