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The Rise of Masculinism in Eastern Europe
“In the recent literature on gender relations in Eastern Europe, it is quite often said that democratization has ‘opened up a space’ within which women can now seek to identify their interests and organize. That is undoubtedly the case. At the same time, however, as offering a space . . .” read more
Taking Women’s Work for Granted
“Lucio Magri’s article on the European Left, in nlr 189, presents an unusually positive and encouraging perspective for radical politics in the coming years, discussing with welcome realism the most disastrous aspects of recent history. It is a valuable aid in what for some of us is . . .” read more
Feminism and Pragmatism: A Reply to Richard Rorty
“In a recent Tanner Lecture delivered at the University of Michigan, Richard Rorty responds to some comments of mine about the significance of his work for feminism. He reports that he was ‘a bit startled’ to find himself identified in my discussion—along with Jean-François Lyotard and Alasdair MacIntyre—as . . .” read more
Feminism without Illusions?
“A year or two ago, when the British media was hyping ‘post-feminism’, there seemed a deep sense of pessimism among feminists, a feeling of isolation, of women’s gains being under attack. Mrs Thatcher’s Iron Maiden caricature of the Strong Woman curdled our aspirations to public advancement, and we . . .” read more
A Phantasmagoria of the Female Body: The Work of Cindy Sherman
“When I was in school I was getting disgusted with the attitude of art being so religious or sacred, so I wanted to make something which people could relate to without having read a book about it first. So that anybody off the street could appreciate it, even . . .” read more
The Uneven Advance of Norwegian Women
“On 9 May 1986, a new social-democratic government was formed in Norway, and a record established. The new prime minister appointed a cabinet in which nearly half the ministers were women. This act created an international media sensation. The Wall Street Journal dedicated its front page to the . . .” read more
Woman Suffrage and the Left: An International Socialist-Feminist Perspective
“It is difficult to imagine a richer subject for a comparative history of democracy than the enfranchisement of women. Despite casual remarks about various governments ‘granting’ women the vote, enfranchisement in the overwhelming number of cases was preceded by a women’s movement demanding it. Indeed, extending over more . . .” read more
Whose Left? Socialism, Feminism and the Future
“Political generations appear and disappear with astonishing speed. Thirty years ago, a budding anarchist and sixties student radical, I shared with certain others of my generation and class a politics of generalized anti-authoritarianism and free love. In Australia at the time, coming out of the rigid conformity of . . .” read more
Different But Not Exceptional: The Feminism of Permeable Fordism
“This article does not take the usual form of a political or academic intervention. It is an essay in intellectual autobiography. Such an effort is, of course, different from the history of ideas—the recounting of ‘debates’ and descriptions of other theorists’ trajectories—which constitutes one of the staples of . . .” read more
Representations of Difference: The Varieties of French Feminism
“As so many other theories originating in Paris in the postwar years, ‘French feminism’ enjoys a high profile in the international marketplace of ideas. Psychoanalytic and linguistic theories, celebrations of ‘difference’, the conjunction of the sexual and the symbolic, essentialism presented in the terms of poststructuralism, all appear . . .” read more
The Postmodern Chameleon
“I am writing in response to Sabina Lovibond’s article ‘Feminism and Postmodernism’, in New Left Review Number 178, in which I am pigeonholed as an apologist for or advocate of anti-Enlightenment philosophy. I now believe that the case I tried to state in favour of adornment in dress . . .” read more
A Reply to Elizabeth Wilson
“Sabina Lovibond replies: Perhaps I should have confined myself more strictly to the ‘specific bit of textual exploration’ which I announced at the beginning of my paper. I ventured further afield out of a sense of alarm at the growing tendency for postmodernist views of subjectivity to . . .” read more
A Comment on Nicky Hart
“Nicky Hart’s engaging essay on gender and stratification (nlr 175) is an eloquent contribution to debates about class. As she suggests, male academics, and particularly male academic sociologists, have a long tradition of assuming that women are peripheral to the process of class formation and the construction . . .” read more
Feminism and Postmodernism
“The term ‘postmodernism’ exerts an instant fascination. For it suggests that ‘modernity’ is, paradoxically, already in the past; and consequently that a new form of consciousness is called for, corresponding to new social conditions. But of course it does not tell us what the distinctive character of these . . .” read more
Feminism as Critique
“The usual idea behind the collective anthology is that it should serve as a means for bringing together the thought of several different authors in debate upon a common theme. In practice, this rarely happens, and it is all too common for volumes of this kind to be . . .” read more
Gender and the Rise and Fall of Class Politics
“Is gender an autonomous form of social stratification? Does it form a compound with other bases of social inequality? How is it related to class, the ‘master’ concept of stratification theory? These questions have been forced into focus in recent years through the emergence of the married yet . . .” read more
The Panorama of Brazilian Feminism
“The women’s movement in Brazil—of which feminism is one aspect—has reflected the condition of women themselves, whose unity as a gender is cut across by other fundamental references (ethnicity, social class, etc.) and has above all been cross-class in character. Its heterogeneous composition stems directly from specific features . . .” read more
Mothers in the Fatherland
“In spring 1987, a political document caused a stir in the Federal Republic of Germany: the Mothers’ Manifesto produced by a section of women in the Green Party. Some passed on to the business of the day with a feeling of kindly satisfaction—there was no longer much to . . .” read more
A Reply to Hammami and Rieker
“The response by Hammami and Rieker to my article ‘Feminism or the Eternal Masculine in the Arab World’ cannot be seen as a straightforward critique of my analysis. Its approach is so contrary to my own, and rejects with such fervour my conception of feminism, social development and . . .” read more
Feminist Orientalism and Orientalist Marxism
“Mai Ghoussoub’s ‘Feminism—or the Eternal Masculine—in the Arab World’ (nlr 161) is indicative of two fundamental problems plaguing radical analysis of the Middle East: the extent to which it is legitimate for Marxists to throw out their analytical categories and resort to Weberian notions of a ‘collective . . .” read more
Subordination and Struggle: Women in Bangladesh
“Bangladesh belongs to what has been described as a belt of ‘classic patriarchy’ which stretches from northern Africa across the Middle East to the northern plains of the Indian sub-continent. The social structures in this belt are characterized by their institutionalization of extremely restrictive codes of behaviour for . . .” read more
Feminist Politics in Japan
“The situation of women in Japan, perhaps the most advanced capitalist nation today, raises a number of issues that will seem at once familiar and highly distinctive to an international readership. What is the role of women’s labour, and how have capital and the state attempted to regulate . . .” read more
Women’s Rights and Catholicism in Ireland
“To judge by results in legislation and social progress, one might well think that Ireland has never had a Women’s Liberation Movement. It is true that in theory women now have equal pay and equal entitlements under social welfare, and that children’s allowances are paid directly to mothers. . . .” read more
Abortion and the New Conservatism
“The broader meaning of the anti-abortion movement, both here and in the United States, has only recently become the object of serious analysis. A particularly important task is to understand the linkage between attacks on legal abortion, the provision of contraception to minors and sex education in schools, . . .” read more
Feminism--or the Eternal Masculine--in the Arab World
“It is difficult to utter your frustrations if a veil seals your lips. Today the yashmak covers the face of Arab women only in rare cases. Yet paradoxically, the more the West comes to terms with the gains of modern feminism, and waxes indignant at the ‘humiliations’ to . . .” read more
Postscript on de Beauvoir
“In her discussion of the books by Judith Okeley and myself on Simone de Beauvoir (nlr 156), Kate Soper raises many useful points and this brief reply is in no sense to quarrel with her interpretation of my work. Yet in writing about Simone de Beauvoir, there . . .” read more
The Wages of Virtue
“Sexual harassment of a direct kind, with attempted rape merging into matrimonial intent, has always been with us, as the image of a caveman hauling a cavewoman off by her hair shows. The Greek myths are full of lustful gods pursuing mortal maidens, with a wide variety of . . .” read more
The Women’s Movement in Greece
“Although feminism, like democracy or socialism, appeals to a universalistic solidarity—born, in this case, of resistance to common experiences of patriarchal and capitalist inequality—the character of particular women’s movements is still shaped by profoundly national contexts of history and socio-economic progress. The uneven trajectories of contemporary capitalist development, . . .” read more
The Qualities of Simone de Beauvoir
“‘For a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it.’ Often quoted as they are, . . .” read more
The Women’s Movement in West Germany
“Today the women’s movement in the Federal Republic of Germany is everywhere and nowhere. This ubiquitous non-existence has perhaps long been a feature of the new women’s movement, but the recent shifts may be best understood in the contradictory terms of a successful defeat. The State, initially under . . .” read more
Women’s Liberation in India
“The birth of the women’s liberation movement was the result of a unique and sharply polarized political conjuncture, between the years 1968 and 1975, which had a radicalizing effect throughout the world. Many of the women involved in the social and political struggles of that period became the . . .” read more
The Women’s Movement in Spain
“It would be hard to consider the Spanish women’s movement independently of recent events in Spanish politics. The death of General Franco in 1975, the gradual dismantling of the authoritarian system imposed on the country after the Civil War, together with the rapid rise to power of the . . .” read more
Weir and Wilson on Feminist Politics
“Angela Weir and Elizabeth Wilson begin their assessment of ‘The British Women’s Movement’ with an acknowledgement of the necessarily partial character of their critique and a declaration that their intention is not a destructive one. Yet despite the benefits of discussion and re-assessment that have accrued to socialist-feminists . . .” read more
The Debate on Sex and Class
“The debate amongst marxist feminists and socialist feminists about sex and class—that is, about the relationship between gender ideology and the material basis of women’s oppression and whether patriarchal structures exist independently from those of capitalism—is presently being pursued in two journals, New Left Review and Studies in . . .” read more
The British Women’s Movement
“A complete overview of British feminism would require a book rather than an essay. Within the context of a brief history of the movement we therefore aim in this article at an assessment of the developments within one section of the movement, socialist feminism, since the second half . . .” read more
Rethinking Women’s Oppression: A Reply to Brenner and Ramas
“Johanna Brenner and Maria Ramas, in their extensive engagement with Women’s Oppression Today , have provided an opportunity for a reassessment of the arguments made there. In this reply I want to comment on what I now consider to be the weaknesses of the book as well as . . .” read more
Rethinking Women’s Oppression
“The past decade has witnessed an extraordinary flowering of Marxist-feminist analysis and debate. Michèle Barrett’s Women’s Oppression Today is an ambitious recent attempt to present and synthesize this literature. Through a dialogue with the most influential currents in socialist-feminist thought Barrett attempts to construct a Marxist analysis of . . .” read more
Morals Also Have Two Genders
“In a talk entitled ‘Women – Victims or Culprits?’, at the first West Berlin People’s University in 1980, I attempted to construct a theory of the process of women’s socialization. My chief concerns were to show the role played by women themselves in reproducing their own oppression, and . . .” read more
Feminism at Work
“The most important political phenomenon of the last two decades and one that will continue to mark the politics of the next has been the development of a new feminist consciousness and a movement for women’s liberation. In Canada and Quebec, as elsewhere in the advanced capitalist world, . . .” read more
Narcissism and the Family: A Critique of Lasch
“A crucial question for feminists is whether the gendered subjectivity of today really does follow the model of patriarchal authority elaborated in psychoanalytic theory. Juliet Mitchell has probably provided the best-known claim for the validity of psychoanalysis as the key to understanding how feminity and masculinity are acquired. . . .” read more
Placing Women’s History in History
“‘Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question; . . . How does it feel to be a problem?’ Thus writes not Simone de Beauvoir, but W.E.B. DuBois. He is speaking, not of women, but of black people—a black male intellectual—within a white world. . . .” read more
Introduction to Chantou Boua
“Over the last decade the fate of Cambodia has come to symbolize some of the most extreme and controversial aspects of twentieth-century history: mass bombing, by the United States in 1973 especially; mass terror, as exercised by the Pol Pot regime from 1975 to 1979; neighbouring invasion, by . . .” read more
Women in Today’s Cambodia
“Statistics recently gathered from villages in different parts of Cambodia suggest that women, including tens of thousands of widows, comprise a disproportionate majority of the labour force—in some places up to two-thirds—and at least fifty-five per cent of the overall population. This demographic imbalance, heavily concentrated amongst the . . .” read more
The Origins of Male Domination
“The social inequalities between men and women are increasingly questioned by women from quite diverse milieux and waging their fight in various ways. Theoretical positions and forms of struggle which a short time ago still had some credibility, and indeed some importance, have began to be transformed by . . .” read more
Beyond the Domestic Labour Debate
“It is nearly a decade since the first texts in the recent domestic labour debate appeared, and since then over fifty articles have been published on the subject of housework in the British and American socialist press alone. This interest in domestic labour has arisen from a wide . . .” read more
The Sexual Division of Labour in Feudal England
“The creation of a political economy of sexual divisions has undoubtedly been one of the most significant intellectual outcomes of the recent feminist revival. The call in the early seventies for the development of an historical and materialist (though not always Marxist) account of sexual division, oppression and . . .” read more