empowerment. It replaces a political process with the instant gratification of financial success, self-pampering and conspicuous consumption. These are the ambivalent outcomes of mainstream integration, accompanied by selective adjustments to the system (Fraser, 2013). Neoliberal feminists are less concerned about solidarity and thrive on the glorification of economic success and the opportunities afforded by the fourth industrial revolution.
In so far as it aligns the emancipation of women within the frame of the market economy, neoliberal feminism has entered a ‘dangerous liaison with advanced capitalism’ (Eisenstein, 2005: 511). To give an example, the ethos of capitalist individualistic self-empowerment is supported by many female CEOs, also known as ‘She-EO’,2 ‘girlboss’,3 ‘fempreneur’,4 ‘mompreneur’ or ‘momtrepreneur’,5 who have come into their own over recent decades. Overwhelmingly successful on multiple scores and seemingly perfect in their performance (McRobbie, 2015), neoliberals make everyone else feel like a bad feminist (Gay, 2014a). The emblematic figure here is Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, whose neoliberal manifesto Lean In became an instant bestseller in 2013. Mindful of the difference between militant feminists and ‘Professional Feminists’, Roxane Gay (2014b: x) was quick in picking up the absurdity of Sandberg’s highly privileged perspective. Something that reads like a corporate fairy tale can only trigger ‘delectation and irritation’ in normal, average feminists (Gay, 2014a: 321). As Rottenberg sharply asked (2018), how reliable is a feminist manifesto drafted by the Chief Operating Officer of tech giant Facebook? Not only does it run the risk of turning into an imperialist assertion of the cultural and political superiority of American culture, but it also over-individualizes the practice of empowerment, losing sight of minimal requirements of feminist solidarity. Neoliberal feminists ignore or forge one of the founding values of feminism, namely that ‘Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement’ (Smith, 1998: 96).
Corporate feminism is also successful in public institutions, best exemplified nowadays by the first woman to chair the IMF and now the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde. Committed to gender equality, and the professional advancement of women, as well as to fighting poverty and social inequalities, Lagarde famously declared that had Lehman Brothers been called and functioned as ‘Lehman Sisters’, the 2008 financial crisis would not have happened. More critical feminists may add that, sisterhood or brotherhood notwithstanding, we would all be better off without such a hegemonic financial sector, but such radicalism cannot be expected of neoliberal feminists. Their political agenda remains the fight against institutional sexism for an equal share of the spoils of an essentially exploitative system.
Not all neoliberal feminists, however, have a sense of public service. Gwyneth Paltrow, for instance, turned the idea of a happy work–life balance into the ultimate luxury commodity. Her company – Goop – is devoted to wellness, inner balance, health and fitness. Spuriously transgressive, it sells allegedly ‘vagina and orgasm’ scented candles. Playing to perfection the orientalist appeal of the wellness industry, Goop promises a healing mind–body harmony which is lacking in the West (Stacey, 2000). The neo-colonialism of this line of business is not lost on green activist Greta Thunberg who is unforgiving in her comments: ‘celebrities, film and pop stars who have stood up against all injustices will not stand up for our environment and for climate justice because that would infringe on their right to fly around the world visiting their favourite restaurants, beaches and yoga retreats’ (2019: 43). The financial success of the global wellness enterprises is central to liberal feminism, which rests on a global emulation of the luxurious lifestyle and shameless consumerism of celebrities and Internet-backed influencers. It has the added disadvantage of exposing the lack of wellness in the general population of common mortals. Burn-out, anxiety, exhaustion, obesity, binge-drinking and self-harming practices are rising in large sectors of the population in advanced economies and especially among women, LGBTQ+ people and ethnic minorities.
Sleep is a significant concern for the wellness industry and the ‘sleep economy’ is a profitable proposition. Marketing high-tech mattresses, high-performance pyjamas and technological sleep-tracking devices, it is estimated at around US$432 billion (Mahdawi, 2020). Remedies against insomnia and bad sleep plunge directly into the psycho-pharmaceutic industry, which is one of the pillars of advanced capitalism (De Sutter, 2018). Gender, labour and class relations are crucial in structuring access to adequate sleep (Fuller, 2018). Paltrow seems to ignore the basic fact that sleep is a class prerogative and that well-off people, and men, have always slept longer and better than economically disadvantaged ones.
The opportunistic commercial pursuit of wellness by the ‘happiness industry’ (Segal, 2017) reinforces the shallow ideology of capitalism as the coercive ‘promise of happiness’ (Ahmed, 2010). Lauren Berlant calls this ideology ‘cruel optimism’ (2011): a constant pressure to succeed in every single aspect of life, including health, happiness, wellness and fitness. Promoted as a social imperative across members of the public, regardless of their actual social situation, it is doomed to fail and cause even greater misery. This neoliberal ideology conceals the concrete socio-economic causes of the ill health, mental fatigue and other problems encountered by large sections of the population. These are due to the consequences of economic austerity regimes; the reduced purchasing power of waged labour and the brutal cuts in social services and welfare introduced by neoliberal economics in the last twenty years (Finlayson, 2019).
Barbara Ehrenreich (2009) stresses the devious ways in which the happiness industry also conceals the lack of adequate health care and insurance in the United States. Even worse, it shifts the responsibility for well-being from social institutions and the state, to the single individual. Women – the privileged target of the happiness industry – are also the primary victims of the lack of health care. Rates of female physical and mental illnesses, such as depression, are alarming. The happiness industry accomplishes a slight of hand: it sells individual remedies against the collective adversity and anxiety induced by the socio-economic conditions of our times (Spicer, 2019). This simultaneously eliminates any collective elements and over-individualizes the issues at stake.
This uncritical support of the status quo shows up dramatically in politics, where at least some neoliberal feminists are prone to turn to the right-wing and even become civilizational warriors in the name of women’s rights. This crusaders’ zeal emphasizes the commitment of Western culture to emancipation and equality set in opposition to the allegedly backwards discriminatory practices of other cultures, notably Islam. In a remarkable reversal of past habits, many Right-wing and populist movements in the West have come out in favour of women’s and gay rights, provided they meet set standards of national cultural identity. They paradoxically stress this emancipated position while perpetuating the populists’ nationalism and inclination to sexism, misogyny, homo- and trans-phobia, as well as virulent racism.
This is the case, for example, in France, where the National Front, under the influence of its former deputy leader and gay activist Florian Philippot, took a firm stand against the ancestral homophobia of Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen’s party. It happened even earlier in the Netherlands, where Right-wing parties embraced the LGBTQ+ people’s cause as a sign of liberation from supposedly Muslim conservatism (Duyvendak, 1996; Mepschen and Duyvendak, 2012). The most recent phenomenon occurred in Germany, where Alice Weidel, an out lesbian, became the leader of the Parliamentary group of the Far-Right Party ‘Alternative for Germany’. The gay (the term ‘lesbian’ is deliberately avoided) Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić also operates within the rank and file of conservative patriotic nativism.6 At the same time, those Islamophobic political movements are doing nothing to fight growing anti-Semitism across the EU region; in fact, some of them are quite embroiled in an anti-Semitic stance.
These hyper-nationalist and racist political organizations make opportunistic use of LGBTQ+ people’s and feminist issues, using them as an example of alleged Western superiority over the Global South in general and Islam in particular. This tactic,
