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Notes for a Feminist Manifesto

Opposed to ‘lean in’ liberal iterations, three activist-scholars premise a militant feminism for the many, inspired by La huelga feminista of 8 March. The politics of social reproduction and the imperative of wider solidarities: the women’s struggle retooled for the multiple crises of late capitalism.

Spain’s Feminist Strike

What led millions to participate in Spain’s nationwide women’s strike—a stoppage of care work as well as wage labour? Assessment of the forces at play—movement organizing, the media, unions, parties—and the potential of 8M to tilt the political balance of forces.

Which Feminisms?

The American anti-discrimination paradigm, generated in the 1960s to neutralize the threat of radical black protests, has provided the palimpsest for global feminism for the past twenty years. How will it be challenged by the eruption of new gender protests, from Buenos Aires to Warsaw, Washington to Rome?

Contradictions of Capital and Care

Nancy Fraser tracks the reconfiguration of the relations of social reproduction under successive regimes of accumulation—‘separate spheres’, male breadwinner, dual-income household. Are the exactions of financialized capitalism now serving to undermine its lifeworld?

Gendered Violence and India’s Body Politic

Falling demand for female labour and rising dowry thresholds as factors behind mounting attacks on women; gang-rape as an instrument of caste-oppression; a culture of impunity in conflict zones; son-preference, girl-aversion and the missing. Manali Desai surveys the modalities of violence against women since Independence.

Feminism and Neoliberalism in Latin America

Verónica Schild tests Nancy Fraser’s hypothesis of an elective affinity between feminism and neoliberalism against the material and cultural realities of Latin America. Shifting meanings of liberationist strategies for women’s autonomy and popular pedagogy in an epoch of free-market economics and NGOization.

Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History

Do feminism and neoliberalism share a secret affinity? Nancy Fraser on the co-option of gender politics by the ‘new spirit’ of post-Fordist capitalism, and subordination of its radical critique to a World Bank agenda. Might a neo-Keynesian shift offer prospects for socialist-feminist renewal?

Against Diversity

Tears and triumphs for race and gender have dominated discussion of the 2008 US election. Walter Benn Michaels argues that the Obama and Clinton campaigns are victories for neoliberalism, not over it—serving only to camouflage inequality.

A Liberal Provoked?

Is patriarchy a structure of power in the family or something wider? Is it largely a pre-capitalist phenomenon? What have been the principal forces dissolving it—commodity relations, liberal ideas, or radical political action? Where are negative rates of reproduction in advanced societies likely to lead? A sharp exchange of ideas beween Nicky Hart and Göran Therborn.

Of Procreation and Power

Is patriarchy a structure of power in the family or something wider? Is it largely a pre-capitalist phenomenon? What have been the principal forces dissolving it—commodity relations, liberal ideas, or radical political action? Where are negative rates of reproduction in advanced societies likely to lead? A sharp exchange of ideas beween Nicky Hart and Göran Therborn.

Feminism at a Standstill

Christine Delphy on Lynne Segal, Why Feminism? A critical look at the relations between psychoanalytic culture and women’s freedom, gender and nature—what is the fit?

The Housewife

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Surrealism’s Feminine Side

What is surrealism? As this anthology superbly documents, it is not a ‘French literary school from the 1920s’, but a vast and ambitious poetic, cultural and political revolutionary movement, a subversive protest, in the name of desire and imagination, against bourgeois civilization. International in its scope, historically open-ended, . . . read more

From the Naked to the Nude

The representation of the unadorned human body by artists—the transformation of the naked into the nude—was reckoned among the highest goals of European art from the Renaissance until well into the present century. But preconceptions of what such images should look like have changed radically during that period. . . . read more

Women, Class and Family

The problems with the study of the family by Europeanists are two-fold. Firstly the terms they use like ‘family’ are often vague and unsatisfactory for analytic purposes—though they may serve as general signposts. Secondly, there is little comparative perspective. Yet this is needed not only to define terms . . . read more

Antipodean Feminism

In the early years of this century, when thoughtful people anywhere discussed ‘the woman question’, Australia constituted the central case, the country where a progressive electorate and an engaged state were facing questions of gender equality head on. In 1902, Australia became the second country in the world . . . 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

An Allegory from Atlantis

Christa Wolf, Medea. A Novel in Voices, Virago Press, London 1998, HB £16.99. read more

Heterosexism, Misrecognition and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler

Judith Butler’s essay is welcome on several counts. It returns us to deep and important questions in social theory that have gone undiscussed for some time. And it links a reflection on such questions to a diagnosis of the troubled state of the Left in the current political . . . read more

Fosterites and Feminists, Or 1950s Ultra-Leftists and the Invention of AmeriKKKa

‘It suffices but to mention the chauvinist ideology which still penetrates the core and culture of our national life, rendering many people susceptible to infliction from this social disease.’—Claudia Jones read more

Biology and Gay Identity

The last two decades have seen accelerated progress in the life sciences, especially molecular biology. On the back of this advance in knowledge, a wave of ideologists have hitched a free ride, claiming that social phenomena from alcoholism to homelessness can be explained in biological, even genetic, terms. . . . read more

Merely Cultural

I propose to consider two different kinds of claims that have circulated recently, representing a culmination of sentiment that has been building for some time. One has to do with an explicitly Marxist objection to the reduction of Marxist scholarship and activism to the study of culture, sometimes . . . read more

Sterilization and Propaganda

Late in August this year, a message was widely broadcast by the international media. Filing their reports out of Stockholm, journalists from around the world presented their readers and viewers with the news that between 1934 and 1976, tens of thousands of people—more than 90 per cent of . . . read more

'La Querelle des Femmes' in the Late Twentieth Century

Although this essay is about feminist challenges to certain ideas of universal citizenship, it was provoked by anger: the intense anger being expressed by some Parisian intellectuals and journalists from across the political spectrum about American politics in general and American feminism in particular. And also my own . . . read more

From Inequality to Difference: A Severe Case of Displacement?

When considering the shifts in left thinking over the past fifteen years, it is hard to avoid some notion of displacement: the cultural displacing the material; identity politics displacing class; the politics of constitutional reform displacing the economics of equality. Difference, in particular, seems to have displaced inequality . . . read more

The War against Feminism in the Name of the Almighty: Making Sense of Gender and Muslim Fundamentalism

A version of this article was presented at the 1997 annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New York. I am grateful for many helpful comments and suggestions by Kevin Anderson, Robin Blackburn, Sondra Hale, Valentine Moghadam, Claire Moses, Rayna Rapp, and especially Nikki Keddie on various . . . read more

A Rejoinder to Iris Young

Iris Young and I seem to inhabit different worlds. In her world, there are no divisions between the social Left and the cultural Left. Proponents of cultural politics work cooperatively with proponents of social politics, linking claims for the recognition of difference with claims for the redistribution of . . . read more

Siren/Hyphen; Or, the Maid Beguiled

‘This female savage’, noted the missionary Jean-Baptiste Labat, in his Nouveau voyage aux îles de l’Amérique, ‘was, I believe, one of the oldest creatures in the world. It is said she was very beautiful at one time. . .’ He was describing a Carib known as Madame Ouvernard, . . . read more

Bisexuality, Capitalism and the Ambivalent Legacy of Psychoanalysis

By the time Freud died in London in 1939, he was already a legend. By the 1950s, he exerted a grip on many imaginations comparable to that of the great figures—Moses, Leonard, Goth, Dostoyevsky—about whom he wrote. Equally important, Frankfurt School theorists placed his work at the centre . . . read more

Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory

Have theorists of justice forgotten about political economy? Have we traced the most important injustices to cultural roots? Is it time for critical social theory to reassert a basic distinction between the material processes of political economy and the symbolic processes of culture? In two recent essays, Nancy . . . read more

Meaning What We Say: Feminist Ethics and the Critique of Humanism

This article will consider a split within current feminist theory which appears to require some declaration of loyalties. The split I have in mind is not altogether easy to describe in terms of the standard academic classification of feminist positions that prevailed in the 1970s and early 1980s—the . . . read more

'In the Tropics There is No Sin': Sexuality and Gay-Lesbian Movements in the Third World

Same-sex erotic behaviour is virtually universal in human societies. Few societies that have been carefully studied have been found to yield no evidence of same-sex eroticism. One survey found that in forty-nine out of the seventy-six societies it examined, some form of same-sex sexual behaviour was socially acceptable. . . . read more

Still Stirred by the Promise of Modernity

Ariel Salleh’s comment is revealingly angry and abusive; she challenges my environmental credentials and my gender reflexivity; I am sexist, racist, masculinist and massaging ‘a defensive old-school socialist demeanour’. Unfortunately this leads her to a perverse reading of my paper, for example my statement that that not all . . . read more

An Ecofeminist Bio-ethic and What Post-Humanism Really Means

A holocaust goes on among us: tomorrow at dawn, another ancient plant or bird will be extinct; nine-hundred million people starve; dammed-up rivers run sour and parched soils crack open; continents swarm with environmental refugees; man-made viruses are unleashed; silently, an ozone hole and electro-magnetic radiation cull new . . . read more

Myths and Realities: A Reply to Cecile Jackson

The myths that Cecile Jackson identifies in her article in nlr 210 are that self-determination and freedom are better achieved through identification with ‘nature’ rather than separation from it; the utopian assertion of the superiority of subsistence economies and communal life; the rejection of scientific knowledge in . . . read more

Man Bad, Woman Good? Essentialisms and Ecofeminisms

Can socialists, radical environmentalists and feminists from other traditions safely dismiss ecofeminism? In this paper I offer both a critique of ecofeminism and a modified defence. On the one hand, I argue, ecofeminism is riddled with essentialism, and open to all the philosophical critiques levelled at any position . . . read more

Sympathy for the Devils: Notes on Some White Guys in the Ridiculous Class War

It seems like another era, though it was less than five years ago, when I was sitting around the Men’s Wisdom Council, grunting Ho with the guys, and studying their hodgepodge, Shake-and-Bake ‘traditions’ for a book I was writing on changing conceptions of white straight men. But now, . . . read more

From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Post-Socialist' Age

The ‘struggle for recognition’ is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of political conflict in the late twentieth century. Demands for ‘recognition of difference’ fuel struggles of groups mobilized under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, ‘race’, gender, and sexuality. In these ‘post-socialist’ conflicts, group identity supplants class interest as . . . read more

Gender, Experience and Subjectivity: The Tilly-Scott Disagreement

From the viewpoint of women’s history in France, Louise Tilly’s article appears to arise from a specifically ‘Anglo-American’ debate. But it does raise questions which are very relevant and current. The Anglo-American connection is not just apparent in the references, most of which are taken from works written . . . read more

Radical Environmental Myths: A Gender Perpective

Environmental activism has reached high levels of public visibility since late 1994 when protests over the transport of live animals at Coventry, Shoreham and Brightlingsea attracted new supporters to the animal-rights movement, revealing the growth of Green politics in unexpected social corners and the changing content of Green . . . read more

The Quota Demand and Feminist Politics

There is not much of a women’s movement in Germany today, in either West or East. A strong backlash can be felt from the relatively united male sector of the population against the achievements of the women’s movement over the past twenty years, and also against the hopes . . . read more

Feminism and the 'Crisis of Rationality'

There is a measure of consensus within feminist theory that rationalist values are in crisis—that the very arrival of women on the scene of intellectual activity necessitates a reappraisal of those values. Sometimes the claim is that conventional scientific research procedure reflects an objectifying, control-seeking attitude to its . . . read more

What Women Demand of Technology

Looking back, my interest in technology must have begun somewhere around 1947—it started in my mother’s kitchen where, I still remember, she used to resort to ingenious fuel-saving devices in order to stretch the small sum of money that she had for feeding her six children, elderly parent-in-law . . . read more

The Modern Women’s Movement in Italy

Modern Italian feminism established itself in the early 1970s, expanding with remarkable strength and radicalism from its middle-class base to become a popular mobilization with an extensive network of activists throughout the organized labour movement. By the end of the decade, however, feminism was in decline; and the . . . read more

Representing Solidarity: Class, Gender and the Crisis in Social-Democratic Sweden

The 1991 Swedish election produced the victory of a coalition of four bourgeois parties dedicated to bringing about a ‘system shift’. Their preparedness to break with the Swedish social-democratic model stands in marked contrast to the bourgeois governments of 1976–82. The change can be understood only in relation . . . read more

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: US Feminism Today

Here is one picture of feminism and women’s experience in the contemporary United States: women advancing up the ladder in professions, public administration and management; making steady inroads into political office; changing attitudes and cultural images; winning legislation against discriminatory practices in education and employment; feminist scholarship transforming . . . read more

Harsh Times

Waves of male chauvinism roll along in history, one after the other, sometimes they resemble one another, sometimes not. The most insidious of these at the moment is in the form of what I have called the denial of mixity: the adoption of a language that symbolically ignores . . . read more

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

Self-Portrait of a Russian Feminist

What sort of family do you come from? How did you become what you are now? 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

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

'Psychoanalysis and Feminism': Rejoinder to Wollheim

We would like to respond to Richard Wollheim’s review (nlr 93) of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism. The Left and the women’s movement traditionally reject Freud as a biological determinist. Mitchell’s book sought to redeem him by presenting a social and cultural reading of psychoanalytic theory. The . . . read more

Psychoanalysis and Feminism

It would be no gross exaggeration to say that the contemporary intellectual case for the women’s movement is pretty much that which the movement inherited from the thought of the 18th-century Enlightenment. The modern age, it is true, has added typical features of style to its presentation—elements of . . . 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

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

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 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

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

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

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

Domestic Labour: Reply to Critics

The real merit of the critique made by Margaret Coulson, Branka Magaš and Hilary Wainwright of my analysis of domestic labour is that it focusses discussion about the strategic relation of women’s liberation to socialist revolution upon women’s double labour condition under capitalism. The fact that working-class women, . . . read more

The Housewife and Her Labour Under Capitalism

The re-emergence of a women’s movement in the late sixties brought with it a flood of radical literature on the oppression of women. The bulk of this writing was descriptive in character. While the portrayal of women’s life-circumstances was often vivid and accurate, the analysis was generally very . . . read more

Answers to Queries from Simone de Beauvoir

Well, Sartre, I want to probe your views on the woman question. Mainly because you have never expressed yourself on the subject, and this in fact is the first thing I want to ask you about. How is it that you have talked about all the oppressed groups—workers, . . . 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

'The Process of Ageing'; 'Feminine Forever'

Alex Comfort: The Process of Ageing. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 27s. 6d. Robert A. Wilson, md: Feminine Forever. W. H. Allen. 18s. read more

Comment on Magas’s 'Sex Politics: Class Politics'

Lucien Rey writes: The main purpose of Branka Magas’s article, as I understand it, is to show that there are a number of crucial theoretical shortcomings in the three books she is reviewing. For instance, they are confused about the concept of ‘equality’, they have an unrealistic historical . . . 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

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’s Wages

In 1960, realizing that ‘National insurance had been running more and more “into the red”’, the government introduced the Graduated Pensions Scheme. Based on the accumulation of annually increasing contributions from employer and employee this provides a built-in discrimination against all women earning between £10 and £15 . . . read more

The Regiments of Women

A damning indictment of our ‘social progress’ is contained in a current Daily Telegraph Gallup Poll report on women voters quoted in a recent bbc television programme. In every election since the war there has been a yawning disparity between men and women voters for the Labour . . . read more

Contraceptives

The Which report on contraceptives represents a serious and courageous investigation of an industry which, protected by the prejudice and hypocrisy of official attitudes, has developed almost without any kind of public control. read more

The 'Woman Question' in the Age of Perestroika

Soviet women! Participate actively in the renewal of Soviet society! Rear a strong, worthy successor generation! 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

Reply to Q.Hoare

Juliet Mitchell writes: read more

Women: The Longest Revolution

The situation of women is different from that of any other social group. This is because they are not one of a number of isolable units, but half a totality: the human species. Women are essential and irreplaceable; they cannot therefore be exploited in the same way as . . . read more

Women’s Education

The tripartite system of secondary education, inaugurated in 1944, has been partially eroded throughout the fifties and early sixties. ‘Parity of esteem’ notoriously proved a synonym for ‘some are more equal than others.’ The comprehensive schools, the Leicestershire, Croydon, West Riding and Stoke experiments and proposals were explicit . . . 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

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

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

Women’s Liberation

This spring brought home to militants of both sexes the surprising fact that the Women’s Liberation Movement, which up to then had appeared to be merely so many small groups meeting at infrequent intervals, had in fact grown to the point that it could, without any extraordinary effort, . . . read more

Sex Politics: Class Politics

In the course of the last year three books were written by women on women’s oppression and liberation. The Female Eunuch and Patriarchal Attitudes, although not written from within the women’s liberation movement, are nevertheless valuable contributions to it. They try to grapple with a number of problems . . . read more

An Interview with Juliet Mitchell

Angela McRobbie: I would like to begin with a question which I’m sure you’ve been asked before. What led you to Freud in the first place—how would you describe the political and cultural route you followed? 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

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

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

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

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

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