5 - Austerity and Feminism(s)

Summary

‘I’m a feminist … it's important, but some [women] need it more than others. Some cultures are already three quarters of the way there … those who have been brought up white, middle class, generally will be, I guess, educated and feminist as a result. But there are other cultures and classes, so, Middle Eastern, Asian, where education isn't that widespread and old belief systems are in power and have a huge influence on how society runs. I guess yeah, those groups, they need feminism more.’

(Mia, 27, middle-class, Anglo-Indian, GP, London, February 2014)

‘It's exciting that there has been a real resurgence of feminist conversations. I’m quite a committed feminist … it's needed more than ever because women's rights and quality of life is being eroded so rapidly and savagely. You just need to look at how savagely they [the government] cut women's services for abuse … refuges hardly exist anymore! What I hope is that this resurgence will have practical applications for women's lives, especially to counter the effects of austerity. As it stands, I don't think this resurgence is having a huge amount of practical effect though … I don't know yet if that's translated into any more services.’

(Rebecca, 28, middle-class, white, Debt and Benefit Advisor, Brighton, April 2015)

It is important to find other unexplored avenues that permit us to further unpack the complex ways in which austerity is produced, sustained and being challenged in the everyday. Feminism, as this chapter illustrates, is a productive site through which to examine austerity discourses and practices. Drawing on narratives from women such as Mia and Rebecca, the chapter exposes how feminism becomes an active force field that reinforces and questions certain aspects of the austerity project, and a way through which moral, classed and racialized differences are opposed and further reproduced. This might seem strange for the reader, when previous chapters have documented the ways in which women's inequality has been further entrenched by the material and symbolic violence born from the austerity programme. Feminism can seek to destroy existing social systems through collective, emancipatory and intersectional gender politics, but it can, as Mary Evans notes, also assist forms of ‘social inequality that support and sustain gender inequality’ (2017: 76).