Feminism and Neoliberalism

Silvia Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor"

Critical Approaches 2

Natalia Cecire | n.cecire@sussex.ac.uk | @ncecire

"Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor"

  • Reproduction
  • Feminist struggle
  • the New International Division of Labor (NIDL)

Neoliberalism (this is background)

  • a phase of capitalism characterized by the belief that markets are natural, self-regulating ecosystems that distribute materials and money in a maximally efficient way
  • unlike in earlier phases of capitalism, in neoliberalism, markets or proxies for markets are considered the ultimate end and authority in all areas of life
  • this belief is expressed in policy through austerity, privatization, and what is often called “deregulation” or a “free trade” approach

"Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor"

  • Reproduction
  • Feminist struggle
  • the New International Division of Labor (NIDL)

Division of labor

Adam Smith on division of labor
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.

Reproduction

[L]ife involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 1845-6 (trans. C. J. Arthur, 1970).

[M]en, who daily remake their own life, begin to make other men, to propagate their kind: the relation between man and woman, parents and children, the family.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 1845-6 (trans. C. J. Arthur, 1970).

With these [historical factors] develops the division of labour, which was originally nothing but the division of labour in the sexual act, then that division of labour which develops spontaneously or ‘naturally’ by virtue of natural predisposition (e.g. physical strength), needs, accidents, etc. etc. Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 1845-6 (trans. C. J. Arthur, 1970).

[T]he difference with housework [as opposed to waged work] lies in the fact that not only has it been imposed on women, but it has been transformed into a natural attribute of our female physique and personality, an internal need, an aspiration, supposedly coming from the depth of our female character.

Silvia Federici, "Wages Against Housework," 1970.

Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch, 2004.

New International Division of Labor (NIDL)

The NIDL is usually identified with the international restructuring of commodity production that has taken place since the mid '70s when, in response to intensifying labor conflict, the multinational corporations began to relocate their industrial outfits, especially in labor-intensive sectors like textile and electronics, in the "developing countries." The NIDL is thus identified with the formation of Free Trade Zones—industrial sites exempt from any labor regulation producing for export—and with the organization of "global assembly lines" by transnational corporations.

Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor" (66-7).

The NIDL is usually identified with the international restructuring of commodity production that has taken place since the mid '70s when, in response to intensifying labor conflict, the multinational corporations began to relocate their industrial outfits, especially in labor-intensive sectors like textile and electronics, in the "developing countries." The NIDL is thus identified with the formation of Free Trade Zones—industrial sites exempt from any labor regulation producing for export—and with the organization of "global assembly lines" by transnational corporations.

Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor" (66-7).

"Sourcemap is easily the most flexible and easy to use supply chain visualization solution. Map the end-to-end supply chain automatically from your purchasing data. Link sites from raw materials to end customers. Search and organize by metrics and tags and instantly generate reports." http://www.sourcemap.com/

On the basis of this situation it should be possible to see that any feminist project exclusively concerned with sexual discrimination and failing to place the "feminization of poverty" in the context of the advance of capitalist relations, is condemned to irrelevance and co-optation. In addition, the NIDL introduces an international redistribution of reproductive work that strengthens the hierarchies inherent in the sexual division of labor and creates new divisions among women.

Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor" (70).

Migration

If it is true that the remittances sent by immigrants constitute the main international monetary flow after the revenues of the oil companies, then the most important commodity that the "Third World" today exports to the "First" is labor. In other words, as in the past, today as well, capitalist accumulation is above all the accumulation of workers, a process that occurs primarily through immigration.

Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor" (71).

The employment of a domestic worker, moreover, makes women (rather than the state) responsible for the work of reproduction and weakens the struggle against the division of labor in the family, sparing women the task of forcing their male partners to share this work.

[...]

It is no use, in fact, to criticize women who employ domestic workers, as some feminists do. As long as reproductive work remains an individual or family responsibility, we may not have much of a choice, particularly when we have to care for people who are ill or not self-sufficient, and in addition have jobs outside the home.

Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor" (71, 73).

As "Third World" feminists have often stressed, the inequalities that exist among women at the international level also affect the politics of the feminist movement. Access to greater resources (travel, grants, publications, rapid means of communication) allows European and North American feminists to impose their agendas on the occasion of global conferences, and play a hegemonic role in the definition of what feminism and feminist struggles must be like.

Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor" (74).

As the men migrate, or do not have the money to support a family, and as the state lacks or is presumed not to have funds to invest in social reproduction, a new patriarchal regime comes into existence, that places women in the "Third World" under the control of the World Bank, the IMF and the many NGOs that manage "income generating projects" and "aid" programs. These are the new supervisors and exploiters of women's reproductive work, and this new patriarchy relies on the collaboration of European and North American women who, like new missionaries, are recruited to train women in the "colonies" to develop the attitudes necessary to become integrated in the global economy

Federici, "Reproduction and Feminist Struggle in the New International Division of Labor" (74-5).

Affective labor, then, is labor that produces or manipulates affects such as a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion. One can recognize affective labor, for example, in the work of legal assistants, flight attendants, and fast food workers (service with a smile). One indication of the rising importance of affective labor, at least in the dominant countries, is the tendency for employers to highlight education, attitude, character, and "prosocial" behavior as the primary skills employers need. A worker with a good attitude and social skills is another way of saying a worker adept at affective labor.

Hardt and Negri, Multitude (108).

Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart
Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling, 1979.

“emotional labour” has done so well as a concept compared to “labour”. congratulations emotional labour

contemporary artist Hannah Black, 25 February 2019

washing up is not emotional labor...it's labor

child care and elder care are not emotional labor...they're labor

service work is not emotional labor...it's labor

  • not all undercompensated, underrecognized, feminine-gendered, or reproductive labor is emotional labor
  • it's only emotional labor if the work being done is emotional
  • emotional labor is still material and embodied
  • globally, migrants do enormous amounts of emotional labor in care and service roles, in addition to other kinds of labor

Federici's take on neoliberalism and feminism:

  • materialist analysis: it's not "nature" or even "culture"; to explain developments, follow the money
  • look at the system, not individual consumer choices
  • we can’t think feminism without anticapitalism, and we can’t think economics without feminism

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