Women's Issues - A gender and class approach

[TBF]

4. Gimenez on Globalization -

Here is one that is really good - and ties into some of the thoughts we've been having about fighting capital on a global level in other threads. It's an easy read -


Connecting Marx and Feminism in the Era of Globalization: A Preliminary Investigation

Author: Martha E. Gimenez

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance of some of Marx’s methodological insights for thinking about feminist issues and politics in the context of globalization. In the short space available here, I want to set down some general observations.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the socialist bloc, “globalization” has become the lens through which everything has to be experienced, examined, and understood. Against the view that everything we knew or thought we knew-including Marx and feminism-has to be re-theorized through the lens of globalization, I will argue instead that it is through the lens of Marx’s work and the work of those who followed in his footsteps that we can fully grasp the nature of globalization. Further, it is through the lens of Marxist-feminism that we can fully comprehend, not only the effects of globalization on women, but also the material conditions determining the ideological forms in which women understand their changing conditions of existence. Finally, to go beyond those ideological forms, I will argue, a new kind of feminism is needed, one which is fully aware of its ideological assumptions and of its historical specificity and conditions of possibility and, consequently, of the capital­ist limits of gender politics ...

Remainder of the article here: http://sdonline.org/35/connecting-marx-and-feminism-in-the-era-of-globalization-a-preliminary-investigation/