Neoliberal Women? Rethinking Professionalisation

Wendy Larner

Neoliberal Women?• Feminist analysts of neoliberalism usually present

narratives of loss; the decline of the nation-state, erosion of public services, co-option of feminism, deepening gendered and racialised inequalities.

• But women also play central roles in making up new ‘neoliberal’ political-economic configurations. This is an as yet poorly understood terrain that demands we think harder about the gendering of neoliberalism in general, and the processes of professionalisation in particular.

Gendering Neoliberalism

• Neoliberalism now a ‘keyword’ in both politics and social sciences which captures the ‘more market’ tendencies of the last three decades.

• Usually seen as compatible with neo-colonial, authoritarian and despotic forms of rule.

• Neoliberalism is responsible for increasing im-miseration of much of the world and women, particularly poor, migrant and minority women, usually suffer the most

Poststructuralist Political Economy

• Draws from political economy literatures on globalisation and governance, and feminist and poststructuralist accounts of discourse and subjectivity• New Spatial Imaginaries• Calculative Practices• Globalising Subjects

Spatial Imaginaries

• Nation-state centred understandings of economy, state and society dominated academic and political life during much of last century.

• Underpinned governmental projects of both the ‘left’ and ‘right’.

• Today there is a new imaginary of global flows, networks, and mobilities.

Call Centre Attraction Initiative

New Zealand Fashion Industry

Economic Development Strategies

Central Role of ‘Intermediaries’

Pieter Stewart, Owner ofNew Zealand Fashion Week

Calculative Practices

• Measurement, inscription and monitoring make objects and subjects visible in particular forms

• Seeing the rise of a range of techniques that encourage us to understand the world as globalising and act accordingly

• These globalising objects and subjects include not only nation-states, but also firms, public sector organisations, NGOs, community organisations, and citizens.

Standards, league tables, location studies, demography…

Multiple and Polysemic

Globalisation as Governmentality

• A taken for granted context in which economic, political and social activities are understood to take place.

• Global flows, networks and mobilities are ‘irreal spaces’ (Rose 1999) both imagined and partially constituted by this new political rationality.

• This new spatial imaginary underpins governmental projects of both the ‘left’ and ‘right’.

Neoliberal Subjects? Denise L’Estrange Corbett,Fashion designer, talking to the APEC small business group

‘Strategic Brokers’, Local Partnerships

Call Centre Training, 100% NZ owned and operated.

Conclusions

• Once we embody accounts of neoliberalism we are forced to recognise that many of the actors involved processes of professionalisation are women.

• Not simply a feature of the small networked New Zealand economy and society.

• Both feminism and women are implicated in the processes of imagination and calculation that are giving rise to new political-economic configurations.