Market-Cautious Feminism
Special Issue: Feminist Legal Theory
ISBN: 978-1-78560-783-7, eISBN: 978-1-78560-782-0
Publication date: 8 February 2016
Abstract
This paper poses the question of whether the mainstream feminist movement in the United States, in concentrating its efforts on achieving gender parity in the existing workplace, is selling women short. In it, I argue that contemporary U.S. feminism has not adequately theorized the problems with the relatively unregulated market system in the United States. That failure has contributed to a situation in which women’s participation in the labor market is mistakenly equated with liberation, and in which other far-ranging effects of the market system on women’s lives inside and outside of work – many of them negative – are overlooked. To theorize the effects of the market system on women’s lives in a more nuanced manner, I borrow from the insights of earlier Marxist and socialist feminists. I then use this more nuanced perspective to outline an agenda for feminism, which I call “market-cautious feminism,” that seeks to regulate the market to serve women’s interests.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
I thank Clare Huntington and the other authors in this special issue for thoughtful discussion and comments that helped me to formulate my views. I also thank Katharine Bartlett, Jean Keller, and Tamara Metz for thoughtful comments on earlier drafts that made this essay far better than it would have been otherwise. I am extremely grateful for the excellent research assistance of Natalie Deyneka, Matthew Farr, Irving Figueroa, and Caline Hou.
Citation
Eichner, M. (2016), "Market-Cautious Feminism", Special Issue: Feminist Legal Theory (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 69), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 141-187. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720160000069006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited