Nancy Fraser > Quotes

“A feminism that is truly anti-racist and anti-imperialist must also be anticapitalist.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%

“These two voices represent opposing paths for the feminist movement. On the one hand, Sandberg and her ilk see feminism as a handmaiden of capitalism. They want a world where the task of managing exploitation in the workplace and oppression in the social whole is shared equally by ruling-class men and women. This is a remarkable vision of equal opportunity domination: one that asks ordinary people, in the name of feminism, to be grateful that it is a woman, not a man, who busts their union, orders a drone to kill their parent, or locks their child in a cage at the border. In sharp contrast to Sandberg’s liberal feminism, the organizers of the huelga feminista insist on ending capitalism: the system that generates the boss, produces national borders, and manufactures the drones that guard them.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99 %

“alliance of the patriarchy and capitalism that wants us to be obedient, submissive and quiet.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%

“what makes the choice pressing for us now is the absence of any viable middle way. We owe the dearth of alternatives to neoliberalism: that exceptionally predatory, financialized form of capitalism that has held sway across the globe for the last forty years. Having poisoned the atmosphere, mocked every pretense of democratic rule, stretched our social capacities to their breaking point, and worsened living conditions generally for the vast majority, this iteration of capitalism has raised the stakes for every social struggle, transforming sober efforts to win modest reforms into pitched battles for survival. Under such conditions, the time for fence-sitting is past, and feminists must take a stand: Will we continue to pursue “equal opportunity domination” while the planet burns? Or will we reimagine gender justice in an anticapitalist form—one that leads beyond the present crisis to a new society?”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%

“Thoughts to words, words to paper.
A gift we give ourselves, both now and later.”
― Nancy Fraser

“The feminism we have in mind recognizes that it must respond to a crisis of epochal proportions: plummeting living standards and looming ecological disaster; rampaging wars and intensified dispossession; mass migrations met with barbed wire; emboldened racism and xenophobia; and the reversal of hard-won rights—both social and political.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“as neoliberalism has entered its current crisis, the urge to reinvent feminist radicalism may be reviving. In an Act Three that is still unfolding, we could see a reinvigorated feminism join other emancipatory forces aiming to subject runaway markets to democratic control. In that case, the movement would retrieve its insurrectionary spirit, while deepening its signature insights: its structural critique of capitalism’s androcentrism, its systemic analysis of male domination, and its gender-sensitive revisions of democracy and justice.”
― Nancy Fraser, Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis

“Violence, in all its forms, is integral to the everyday functioning of capitalist society—for it is only through a mix of brute coercion and constructed consent that the system can sustain itself in the best of times. One form of violence cannot be stopped without stopping the others.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%

“Whereas the Universal Breadwinner model penalizes women for not being like men, the Caregiver Parity model relegates them to an inferior “mommy track.” I conclude, accordingly, that feminists should develop a third model—“Universal Caregiver”—which would induce men to become more like women are now: people who combine employment with responsibilities for primary caregiving. Treating women’s current life patterns as the norm, this model would aim to overcome the separation of breadwinning and carework. Avoiding both the workerism of Universal Breadwinner and the domestic privatism of Caregiver Parity, it aims to provide gender justice and security for all.”
― Nancy Fraser, Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis

“La tercera dimensión de la justicia es lo político. Por supuesto, la distribución y el reconocimiento son también algo político en el sentido de que una y otra sufren el rechazo y el peso del poder; y normalmente se las ha contemplado como si requirieran el arbitraje del Estado. Pero yo entiendo lo político en un sentido más específico y constitutivo, que remite a la naturaleza de la jurisdicción del Estado y a las reglas de decisión con las que estructura la confrontación. Lo político, en este sentido, suministra el escenario en donde se desarrollan las luchas por la distribución y el reconocimiento. Al establecer los criterios de pertenencia social, y al determinar así quién cuenta como miembro, la dimensión política de la justicia especifica el alcance de las otras dos dimensiones: nos dice quién está incluido en y quién excluido del círculo de los que tienen derecho a una justa distribución y al reconocimiento mutuo.”
― Nancy Fraser, Escalas de justicia (Pensamiento Herder)

“In capitalist societies, the pivotally important role of social reproduction is disguised and disavowed. Far from being valued in its own right, the making of people is treated as a mere means to the making of profit. Because capital avoids paying for this work to the extent that it can, while treating money as the be-all and end-all, it relegates those who perform social-reproductive labor to a position of subordination—not only to the owners of capital, but also to those more advantaged waged workers who can offload the responsibility for it onto others.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%

“Here, accordingly, we encounter two principal sets of institutions that depoliticize social needs: first, domestic institutions, especially the normative domestic form, namely, the modern, male-headed, nuclear family; and, second, official-economic capitalist system institutions, especially paid workplaces, markets,credit mechanisms, and “ private” enterprises and corporations. Domestic institutions depoliticize certain matters by personalizing and/or familializing them; they cast these as private-domestic or personal-familial matters in contradistinction to public, political matters. Official-economic capitalist system institutions depoliticize certain matters by economizing them; the issues in question here are cast as impersonal market imperatives or as “ private” ownership prerogatives or as technical problems for managers and planners, all in contradistinction to political matters.”
― Nancy Fraser, Fortunes of Feminism. From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis

“Our answer to lean-in feminism is kick-back feminism. We have no interest in breaking the glass ceiling while leaving the vast majority to clean up the shards. Far from celebrating women CEOs who occupy corner offices, we want to get rid of CEOs and corner offices.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“Historically, the 1 percent have always been indifferent to the interests of society or the majority. But today they are especially dangerous. In their single-minded pursuit of short-term profits, they fail to gauge not only the depth of the crisis, but also the threat it poses to the long-term health of the capitalist system itself: they would rather drill for oil now than ensure the ecological preconditions for their own future profits!”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“si queremos entender la relativa ausencia de crítica del capitalismo en los últimos años, hemos de contemplar también el factor del auge espectacular del pensamiento posestructuralista en las postrimerías del siglo XX. En la academia estadounidense, al menos, el postestructuralismo se convirtió en la “oposición oficial” a la filosofía moral y política liberal. Y, sin embargo, a pesar de sus diferencias, estos manifiestos oponentes compartían algo fundamental: tanto el liberalismo como el postestructuralismo eran formas de rehuir el problema de la economía política y el de la propia economía social. Fue una convergencia de extraordinaria fuerza: todo un golpe de mano, si se quiere.”
― Nancy Fraser, Capitalismo: Una conversación desde la Teoría Crítica

“legal emancipation remains an empty shell if it does not include public services, social housing, and funding to ensure that women can leave domestic and workplace violence.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“Its love affair with individual advancement equally permeates the world of social-media celebrity, which also confuses feminism with the ascent of individual women. In that world, “feminism” risks becoming a trending hashtag and a vehicle of self-promotion, deployed less to liberate the many than to elevate the few.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
― Nancy Fraser, The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond

“confront head on, the real source of crisis and misery, which is capitalism.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“This is a remarkable vision of equal opportunity domination: one that asks ordinary people, in the name of feminism, to be grateful that it is a woman, not a man, who busts their union, orders a drone to kill their parent, or locks their child in a cage at the border. In sharp contrast to Sandberg’s liberal feminism, the organizers of the huelga feminista insist on ending capitalism: the system that generates the boss, produces national borders, and manufactures the drones that guard them.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%

“With this bold stroke, they re-politicized International Women’s Day. Brushing aside the tacky baubles of depoliticization—brunches, mimosas, and Hallmark cards—the strikers have revived the day’s all-but-forgotten historical roots in working-class and socialist feminism.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“The mainstream media continues to equate feminism, as such, with liberal feminism. But far from providing the solution, liberal feminism is part of the problem. Centered in the global North among the professional-managerial stratum, it is focused on “leaning-in” and “cracking the glass ceiling.” Dedicated to enabling a smattering of privileged women to climb the corporate ladder and the ranks of the military, it propounds a market-centered view of equality that dovetails perfectly with the prevailing corporate enthusiasm for “diversity.” Although it condemns “discrimination” and advocates “freedom of choice,” liberal feminism steadfastly refuses to address the socioeconomic constraints that make freedom and empowerment impossible for the large majority of women. Its real aim is not equality, but meritocracy. Rather than seeking to abolish social hierarchy, it aims to “diversify” it, “empowering” “talented” women to rise to the top. In treating women simply as an “underrepresented group,” its proponents seek to ensure that a few privileged souls can attain positions and pay on a par with the men of their own class.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“Those “others” are largely female. For in capitalist society, the organization of social reproduction rests on gender: it relies on gender roles and entrenches gender oppression.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%

“An economic system defined by private property, the accumulation of “self”-expanding value, the market allocation of social surplus and of major inputs to commodity production, including (doubly) free labor, is rendered possible by four crucial background conditions, concerned, respectively, with social reproduction, the earth’s ecology, political power, and ongoing infusions of wealth expropriated from racialized peoples.”
― Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It

“both those “exes” contribute to accumulation, but they do so in different ways. Exploitation transfers value to capital under the guise of a free contractual exchange: in return for the use of their labor power, workers receive wages that (are supposed to) cover their costs of living; while capital appropriates their “surplus labor time,” it (supposedly) pays at least for their “necessary labor time.” In expropriation, by contrast, capitalists dispense with all such niceties in favor of brute confiscation of others’ assets, for which they pay little or nothing; by funneling commandeered labor, land, minerals, and/or energy into their firms’ operations, they lower their production costs and raise their profits. Thus, far from excluding one another, expropriation and exploitation work hand in hand. Doubly free wage laborers transform looted “raw materials” on machines powered by confiscated sources of energy. Their wages are kept low by the availability of food grown on stolen lands by indebted peons and of consumer goods produced in sweatshops by unfree or dependent “others,” whose own reproduction costs are not fully remunerated. Expropriation thus underlies exploitation and makes it profitable. Far from being confined to the system’s beginnings, it is a built-in feature of capitalist society, as constitutive and structurally grounded as exploitation.”
― Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It

“What we are living through is a crisis of society as a whole—and its root cause is capitalism.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“feminism for the 99 percent seeks profound, far-reaching social transformation. That, in a nutshell, is why it cannot be a separatist movement. We propose, rather, to join with every movement that fights for the 99 percent”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“By itself, legal abortion does little for poor and working-class women who have neither the means to pay for it nor access to clinics that provide it. Rather, reproductive justice requires free, universal, not-for-profit health care, as well as the end of racist, eugenicist practices in the medical profession.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“By definition, the principal beneficiaries are those who already possess considerable social, cultural, and economic advantages. Everyone else remains stuck in the basement.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“we are living through is a crisis of society as a whole. By no means restricted to the precincts of finance, it is simultaneously a crisis of economy, ecology, politics, and “care.” A general crisis of an entire form of social organization,”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto