The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism by Catherine Rottenberg

Abstract

The book under review, The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism by Catherine Rottenberg, explores the resurgence of feminist agenda in United States. In the book Rottenberg succinctly challenges the image of teleological progress of feminist movements which had proliferated the media in United States, pre-election. She tracks the “mutual entanglement of feminism with neoliberalism” through mainstream outlets like newspaper articles, bestselling autobiographies, television series etc. She argues that the popular discourse marks a shift in the feminist vocabulary, whereby debates on equal rights, liberation and social justice were replaced by words such as happiness, balance and responsibility. It is this neoliberal feminist turn, it underlying logic and its “intricate mechanisms” that form the basis of Rottenberg’s book.Throughout the book Rottenberg maintains that at the heart of the neoliberal feminist narrative is the notion of “work-family balance”, where women should be able to have a successful career and a satisfying family life. It not only discursively constructs a “happy work –family balance” as a commonsensical feminist ideal, but makes her individually responsible for attaining this ideal. This is specifically interesting as generally emancipation for women had been seen as freedom from domesticity. The manner in which the so called “equilibrium” between work and family undermines the potent feminist challenge to the structural inequalities emanent in both the public and the private realm form the core of her work. Further, she argues that the balanced life ideal, almost inevitably produces its other, the domestic and care workers, who are exploitable and disposable.