Feminism’s Class Problem

I am very excited about the new project at The Nation Kathleen Geier is heading up. The Curve will bring together experts twice a month to talk about the intersection of economics and feminism. That’s a concept long overdue in progressive media, where white men still dominate discussions of economic issues.

The series starts off great too, discussing the class divide within feminism, particularly in the aftermath of Sheryl Sandberg. Geier:

Whatever you think of Sheryl Sandberg, her chirpy self-help book Lean In achieved at least one very important objective: it exposed the deep class divide within American feminism. Sandberg, the centimillionaire Facebook executive, wrote a book arguing that individual empowerment was the way forward for the women’s movement and ignited a raging debate among feminists. Sandberg’s frank acknowledgement that her message was pitched to professional elites rather than the masses, her enthusiasm for capitalism and her advocacy of a depoliticized strategy that focused on self-improvement rather collective action troubled many feminists on the left. If feminism is defined down as the right of elite women to enjoy equality with men of their class, is that really feminism—which at least in theory advocates the liberation of all women—in any meaningful sense?

Of course, Sandberg’s rationale was that if more women advanced into leadership positions, all women would gain. But there is little reason to have faith that Sandberg-style “trickle-down” feminism will benefit the masses any more than its economic equivalent has.

Focusing on the rich is always easier than the poor because it allows one to isolate a single issue as a problem rather than deal with the endemic disease of poverty. Female executives of course should make the same money as male executives, but that doesn’t really help most women.