Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (Fraser, 2013) is a collection of essays by Nancy Fraser from 1985 to 2010. The book, in Fraser’s own word, is to clarify the “struggles and wishes” of the second-wave feminism in the United States (p. 26). In doing so, Fraser sheds lights on a new pathway towards gender justice in the contemporary world. As Fraser is a political philosopher, the book proves to be mostly conceptual. The contents of the book are organized into three parts, corresponding to three distinct themes of the second-wave feminism: redistribution, recognition, and representation. The present book review follows a similar structure, as I will highlight the struggles and wishes around each of the three themes. I will also briefly discuss how Fraser’s work can inform future research on work and employment at the end of the review.
Redistribution, 1950s - 1970s
The first part of the book centers around the feminist wish for redistribution from 1950s to 1970s. This period witnesses women’ unprecedented progress in claiming their social, economic, and legal rights. In Fraser’s account, the wish for redistribution reflects feminists’ struggle over a gendered political economy that artificially depicts women as a private and dependent figure. Fraser elaborates this idea in two separate essays. In the first essay “What’s Critical About Critical Theory”, Fraser argues that the distinction between waged labor and childrearing lacks a philosophical justification, because both activities involve material and symbolic reproductions (pp. 27-30). As such, the distinction potentially serves a more pragmatic purpose to legitimize women’s subordination in the capitalist system: public and political contests are less likely when women are confined in the private sphere of family (pp. 31-32).
In the second essay “A Genealogy of Dependency”, Fraser traces the historical shifts in linguistic usage of the word “dependency”. She convincingly shows that dependency, once a general and neutral term for comprehensive subordination, is now differentiated into economic, political, socio-legal, and psychological registers with moral values. This change reflects some major socio-historical developments, such as the Protestant Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the welfare state (pp. 147-150). For example, the moral value associated with economic dependency is mostly socially constructed to recruit male workers into capitalist production. In this sense, the various negative moral values related to women’s dependency (e.g., as housewives and welfare recipients) are by no means natural and uncontestable. A radical transformation of the entire political economy is thus possible.
Recognition, 1980s - present
Moving to the second part of the book, Fraser directs readers to the issue of recognition—the feminist wish to criticize androcentric cultural values since 1980s. As the subject of the struggle, these cultural values are not immanent in the political economy that devalues women. Instead, they are institutionalized social practices that are harmful to different identity groups. For instance, people with nontraditional gender identities and sexual orientations often face implicit discrimination and microaggression in their daily lives. While diversity and inclusion has become increasingly popular in contemporary dialogues, Fraser is highly doubtful about whether recognition alone suffice for gender justice. For one thing, Fraser believes that the emphasis on recognition reflects a failure to fundamentally transform the gendered political economy. For another, Fraser is concerned about the possibility that the struggle over recognition may direct away feminists’ attention from courageous attempts to confront the unequal social structure, because identity politics “dovetails too neatly with a rising neoliberalism” that emphasizes blatant individualism, self-interest, and negative liberty (pp. 6, 218). In general, Fraser proposes that one should contest gender justice along both dimensions of redistribution and recognition.
Representation, the road ahead
In the third part, Fraser considers the necessity of representation as a new dimension of gender justice, which reflects the feminist wish to combat the ever liquid capital behind transnational production and job outsourcing. While both redistribution and recognition “focus exclusively on the question of what is owed as a matter of justice to community members”, representation addresses “who should count as a member and which is relevant community” (p. 259). Should women who assemble iPhone in China also have a say in the U.S. feminist movement? Should outsourced janitors be part of their employers’ justice conversations? Most importantly, what institutions should be created to empower these marginalized groups?
While Fraser does not propose a specific political agenda that incorporates all three dimensions of gender justice, she does explicate a framework aimed at “disrupting our dangerous liaison with neoliberalism and liberating our radical enegeries” (p. 20). In the final essay “Between Marketization and Social Protection”, she criticizes Karl Polanyi’s theory of double movement for overly romanticizing social protection and disdaining marketization (p. 315). This is not too difficult to understand if one considers the potential harm of social protection and the liberating power of marketization. The former includes stigma attached to welfare programs, and the latter includes modern technologies that free women from domestic drudgery. As such, Fraser contests the need for a triple movement, in which both social protection and marketization are “mediated” by a third element of emancipation (p. 320). Simply speaking, Fraser argues that any effects of social protection or marketization should always be critically evaluated and refined against the principal of redistribution, recognition, and representation for an emancipatory purpose.
Concluding remarks
Fraser’s enquire into the second-wave feminism is inspirational for future research on work and employment. Of particular interest to me is the ideological use of “public” and “private”. On the one hand, employers sometimes reject employees to reveal their personal feelings (private) at work (public). For example, many companies illegally prohibit workers from talking about their job conditions at work (Freeman & Rogers, 2006). On the other hand, employers often demand employees to wisely use their personalities and emotions (private) for work (public) (Mills, 2002; Weeks, 2017). This is most common among pink-collar workers such as teachers, nurses, office clerks, and secretaries. The problem with ideological use of public and private is even more prominent nowadays, as the once clear boundary between work and family becomes vague since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fraser’s interrogation of the second-wave feminism is of course not perfect. First, Fraser’s different treatments of redistribution and recognition seems to contrast with the intersectionality theory, in which identity differences are clearly linked to power relations and structural inequality (Cho et al., 2013; Choo & Ferree, 2010). Second, Fraser fails to incorporate a life course perspective in her analysis (Moen et al., 1992). One could easy ask questions such as “what are the struggle and wishes for women who are 20, 40, 60, and 80 years old?” Nevertheless, these deficiencies in Fraser’s work may open up new possibilities for future research.
References
Cho, S. K., Crenshaw, K. W., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies. In Theories of race and racism (pp. 614–624). Routledge.
Choo, H. Y., & Ferree, M. M. (2010). Practicing intersectionality in sociological research: A critical analysis of inclusions, interactions, and institutions in the study of inequalities. Sociological Theory, 28(2), 129–149.
Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis. Verso Books.
Freeman, R. B., & Rogers, J. (2006). What workers want? Cornell University Press.
Mills, C. W. (2002). White collar: The American middle classes. Oxford University Press.
Moen, P., Dempster-McClain, D., & Williams Jr, R. M. (1992). Successful aging: A life-course perspective on women’s multiple roles and health. American Journal of Sociology, 97(6), 1612–1638.
Weeks, K. (2017). Down with love: Feminist critique and the new ideologies of work. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 45(3/4), 37–58. 4