Feminism

"On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, observed globally from 25 November to 10 December, Free Women will conduct simultaneous national actions in four cities under the theme ’Decent Work and Freedom from Violence Will Not Be Achieved Under an Anti-Democratic Regime’. This is an effort to strengthen the global commitment of the women’s movement to end torture and violence against women."

An interview with Feminist Workshop (Ukraine) by Patrick Le Tréhondat (ENSU, France).

Dramatically falling birthrates and a skyrocketing number of divorces as the number of marriages collapsing increases all point toward the erosion of the capitalist family unit in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Such trends, furthermore, represent an existential crisis for the nation, as the deepening crisis of social reproduction in the post-socialist country also threatens the reproduction of its necessary supply of labor power. But what exactly is this crisis of social reproduction, and what, if anything, is specific about the situation in the PRC? What role does the feminist movement in the PRC play in all of this?

Amandla! interviewed Denia Jansen, Co-ordinator of the gender based violence (GBV) programme for the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA)

Neoliberalism enforces family responsibility with a cruel logic: a couple who can’t afford rent without both their incomes are a couple who stick together. A young adult who can’t afford college without student loans is a child who remains bound to her parent. Lack of public spending on public goods forces poor and working-class people into economic dependence on their relatives. Meanwhile, for the rich, the private family is reinforced as a main conduit for wealth transmission.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022, as well as both national and international policies to deal with the impact of the war, have surely influenced the spaces and networks of social reproduction, both in Ukraine and in refuge. The destruction and resulting displacement, neoliberal austerity, unprecedented border regulations, and refugee policies, have all led to a reconfiguration of social reproduction in Ukrainian society.

“Changes in public opinion have not yet brought changes to Republican-dominated state legislatures, not surprising when we consider their lop-sided gerrymandered character. Yet Republicans are now on notice, even in very, very red states.”

Capitalists and Marxists both have long studied how capitalism imposes a time-work discipline on waged workers. And some Marxists—most famously perhaps Henri Lefebvre— have suggested that time structures social life more generally. In what follows, I think about this question from the more specific perspective of social reproductive labor time. That is, what can be said about the temporalities of life-making in capitalist societies? How might an analytic focus on time and temporalities help us better understand how capitalism concretely conditions the work of life-making? And how might social reproductive labor time, despite being conditioned by capitalist productive relations, contradict and be deployed to resist capitalism?

“Riots, boycotts and looting in the face of famines are part of the genealogy of the labour movement and of the feminism that we must put at the service of inspiring struggles against present-day famines.”

TWENTIETH-CENTURY PRE-ROE America was a scary world for women. Pregnancy and childbirth were destiny.