McDonald’s workers in Chicago march to the corporate office as part of the nationwide movement against sexual harassment.
Review: Feminism for the 99% Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto By Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, & Nancy Fraser Verso Books, $12.95
Dana White
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ublished in a time of rising women’s movements around the globe, the recently released book Feminism for the 99% will draw the attention of many who are eager to fight back against increased attacks on women’s rights and seek to win genuine liberation. In this brief manifesto, the three authors Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser present eleven theses for a class-based feminism for the 99%, focused on the needs of working-class women and not the wealthy few. Just a few years ago, Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” rose to the top ranks of the New York Times Bestseller List for over a year, selling millions of copies. “Lean In” urged women to overcome all obstacles to climb their way up the corporate ladder with hopes of achieving more equitable rosters of CEOs and corporate boards. However, for the vast majority of women, this socalled corporate ladder isn’t even reachable from the basement of economic precarity, low-wage jobs, and lack of public social supports including healthcare, housing, and childcare. In Feminism for the 99%, Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser set out to present a working-class women’s alternative to Sandberg’s corporate feminism and “equal opportunity domination” for a select few women in power. The authors write, “We aim to explain why feminists should choose the road of feminist strikes,
why we must unite with other anticapitalist and antisystemic movements, and why our movement must become a feminism for the 99%.” Woven throughout the book, the authors outline their vision for a movement based on the understanding that true equality for women cannot be achieved under our current exploitative capitalist system.
Gender Oppression and the Crisis of Capitalism
The authors especially focus on the fundamental role of capitalism in maintaining gender oppression. They argue that capitalism is “the real source of crisis and misery” which constantly pursues unlimited profit while free-riding on nature, public goods, and the unwaged work primary shouldered by women that is necessary to tend to children and communities. To fight back against capitalism, the authors argue we must build an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, internationalist feminist movement. In discussing the central role of capitalism, the book draws out the persistent connection between violence against women and the growing capitalist crisis with its imposed austerity and cuts to public services. Since the 2008 economic crisis, the extreme magnitude of cuts to public programs, prevalence of low-wage jobs, and dismantling of the welfare state have disproportionately impacted women and, in some countries, led to a genuine throwing back of gender equality. An ever-increasing number of women workers in low-paid and part-time positions find themselves even more susceptible to harassment on the job, and a lack of labor protections further exacerbates the workplace violence
