Capitalism and Women
On September 16, 2019, the Cato Institute held a debate on the topic of women and capitalism. Framed as “Does Capitalism Help or Harm Women?,” the event featured two speakers: Veronique de Rugy, and Senior Fellow at the Mercatus Center, and Nicole Aschoff, a member of the editorial board at Jacobin. The debate was moderated by Chelsea Follett, a Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute. On the webpage, the debate is billed as:
Two scholars — a free marketer and an anti-capitalist — will go head-to-head to answer an important question: Does capitalism help or harm women?
The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank, originally called the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974, and was re-branded in 1976. The Institute advocates limited governmental control within domestic and foreign affairs. The Mercatus Center is free-market think tank. It, too, had been supported by the Koch brothers, and Charles Koch serves on the board. Jacobin magazine is a socialist/Marxist-oriented publication, a self-described “radical magazine,” founded by Bhaskar Sunkara, a democratic socialist and author of The Socialist Manifesto (2019).
Each debater was allowed a fifteen-minute opening statement, followed by rebuttals, and then one question posed to the other debater. In order to facilitate the discussion, de Rugy and Aschoff were each provided with three prompts:
• Has the spread of capitalism been a net positive or a net negative for women around the world?
• Is capitalism an inherently exploitative, oppressive, and patriarchal economic system entwined with the subjugation of women?
• Or, has capitalism helped to empower women, enhancing their material well-being and fostering gender parity?
In her opening statement, Aschoff argued that capitalism has not been a net positive for women. While a few women have been successful under capitalism, the vast majority has not. In fact, the bottom 60% of all people have seen wages stagnate and opportunities dwindle. For Aschoff, the fundamental aims of capitalism remain antithetical to social empowerment and enrichment. The goal of capitalism is to make a profit for those with money, and not to improve the lives of individuals.
In de Rugy’s opening statement, she begins by offering her incredulity at the very question. Only a Google search convinced her that people actually doubt the benefits of capitalism. She lists a set of freedoms that she enjoys (the right to marry, to choose her partner, her reproductive rights) that are enabled via capitalism. She states, “Capitalism is a gift to feminism.”
I would suggest, however, that de Rugy misattributes the source of her personal freedoms. For example, she cites her reproductive freedoms as a benefit of capitalism, when, in fact, they are a benefit of democracy (even if they are currently eroding away). In her definition of capitalism, she includes limited government, individual freedoms, and voluntary consent. I would question, though, whether those are characteristics of capitalism and not goals of capitalism — conditions to which capitalists aspire. She later compares “communist Russia,” the socialist Scandinavian countries, and freedom-loving capitalist countries. After acknowledging some benefits to women in Scandinavia, she notes that they are actually capitalist countries! Well, of course they are. Norway, Sweden, and Finland are all three parliamentary democracies, with socialist policies and institutions. They have market economies (which favor individuals) and socialist policies (which favor the community).
So, Aschoff, described in her introduction as an “anti-capitalist,” concludes that feminism and capitalism cannot “coexist.” They are rooted in fundamentally opposing values and goals. De Rugy concludes that capitalism is the best thing for feminism since, well, feminism. She argues that capitalism maximizes the individual (woman’s) choices. Perhaps somewhat predictably, I would take a stance somewhere in between those two positions.
If we look at the two arguments, they differ fundamentally on the goals of feminism. When de Rugy calls capitalism a “gift” to feminism, she predicates that claim on her definition of capitalism as a ruggedly individualistic system, one that encourages and enables individual choices (tell that to a single mother struggling to pay rent, buy food, find work, and find childcare!). For her, some women have excelled and found a place within the system and we find “very little” abject poverty in capitalist countries. Aschoff looks, instead, at outcomes for aggregates, for groups of people. She acknowledges that some individual women have excelled within the capitalist system. But for Aschoff, that is not the end goal of feminism. For Aschoff, the end goal of feminism is to end poverty for all people, for all people to excel and live safe and comfortable lives.
Feminists have long pondered the relationship of the individual to the whole. Mary Wollstonecraft (whom de Rugy invokes in the name of capitalism) begins her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by writing: “I plead for my sex — not for myself.” One hundred years later, Anna Julia Cooper writes in A Voice from the South (1892), “I am my sister’s keeper.” They understood, a white woman from England, and a black woman from the US, that women would rise and fall together. They understood that it was not sufficient for some women to succeed and others to fail. (Though I am not forgetting Wollstonecraft’s shortcomings regarding race, class, and religion.)
While (many) second wave feminists tended to favor the collective, even as may of them tried to enter into the marketplace of individual accomplishments (business, politics, law). While (many) third wave feminists espouse individualism and individuality, many of those same feminists desire a reprieve from the individual and long for community. As Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake write:
Despite our knowing better, despite our knowing its emptiness, the ideology of individualism is still a major motivating force in many third wave lives.
Which brings us back to Aschoff. She argues against the individualism of de Rugy’s capitalism, the empty individualism of Heywood and Drake. She argues in favor of the collective. For Aschoff, and for many feminists like her, collective thinking and action — and a rejection of the individualism of capitalism — are our only hope. The goal of Aschoff’s feminism (and mine) is not to create a profit for ourselves. The goal of this version of feminism it to create a better world, for everyone.
Ritch Calvin is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of a book on feminist science fiction and editor of a collection of essays on Gilmore Girls.
