Feminism for the 99 Percent – Manifesto

Feminism of the 99% is a grassroots movement of radical feminists, which emerged from the Women’s March against Donald Trump's policies and election, and who share the belief that the oppression of women intersects with class oppression, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and other forms of oppression, and that the oppression of women cannot be explained solely by gender. In February 2017, Nancy Fraser, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Cinzia Arruzza published an article under this name in Viewpoint Magazine, Feminism of the 99%, and since then, this concept has succeeded in uniting radical feminists in opposition to contemporary mainstream feminism, which has overlooked the situation of many women; low-wage women, the poor, immigrants, and other women who experience oppression due to the intersection of women's oppression and oppression based on racism, imperialism, and capitalism. This spring, a book was published under this name, a kind of address to 99% of women about a more radical feminism, something that could easily be called socialist feminism.

Here is the book's foreword in a loose translation:

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A Lion in the Road

In the spring of 2018, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's CEO, informed the world that we "would be much better off if half of all countries and companies were run by women and half of all homes were run by men." Furthermore, that "we should not rest until that goal is achieved." As one of the main proponents of corporate feminism, Sandberg had already made a name for herself (and money) by encouraging women to lean in at corporate board meetings. As former chief of staff to Larry Summers – the man who deregulated Wall Street – she had no qualms about this advice. Taking initiative and achieving success in business would be the golden path towards gender equality.

That same spring, a militant feminist strike shut down Spain. Along with over five million people who supported them through demonstrations. The organizers of the twenty-four-hour feminist huelga called for "a society free from the oppression of women, exploitation, and violence..." They called for "rebellion and resistance against the alliance of patriarchy and capitalism that wants us to be obedient, submissive, and silent." As the sun set over Madrid and Barcelona, the striking feminists declared that "on March 8, we cross our arms, and disrupt all production, economic and biological." Adding that they would not "accept worse working conditions or terms, nor lower wages than men for the same work."

These two voices represent two different and irreconcilable paths for the feminist movement. One path includes Sandberg's camp: who see feminism as the handmaiden of capitalism. They want a world where the management of workplace exploitation and societal oppression is equally shared between the genders of the ruling class. This is a remarkable vision of equal opportunities for oppression. Which asks, in the name of feminism, ordinary people to be grateful because it is a woman and not a man who breaks up their unions, sends drones to kill their parents, or locks their children in cages at the borders. Unlike Sandberg's liberal feminism, the organizers of the feminist huelga have it on their agenda to end capitalism, the system that creates the bosses, the borders, and the drones that protect them.

We stand at a crossroads, facing these two visions of feminism, and our choice will have enormous consequences for humanity. One path will lead to a planet in smoldering ruins, where human life will be so meager as to be almost unrecognizable – if it can thrive at all. The other path leads towards a global order that has always been prominent in humanity's most ambitious dreams: a just world where wealth and natural resources are shared among all, and equality and freedom are the starting point, not the goal.

The difference could simply not be more obvious. But what makes the choice urgent for us now is the fact that no real middle ground is possible. We can thank neoliberalism for this lack of options: this exceptionally aggressive, financialized form of capitalism that has held sway for the past forty years. After poisoning the atmosphere, mocking all democratic attempts, pushing all social progress to the brink, and severely damaging the living conditions of the vast majority, this form of capitalism has made what is at stake in all social movements considerably greater and more serious – in fact, transforming modest efforts into a fierce struggle for life and death. Under such circumstances, the time for sitting on the sidelines is over, and feminists must simply take a stand: will we continue to strive for "equal opportunities for oppression" while the earth burns? Or will we rather rethink gender justice in an anti-capitalist way – leading us out of the current crisis to a new society.

This manifesto supports the latter path, a path we believe to be both a necessary and realistic option. A large part of the reason why anti-capitalist feminism is conceivable today is that the credibility of the elite is collapsing worldwide. The collapse extends not only to center-left and center-right parties advocating neoliberalism – now merely a shadow of their former selves met with hostility – but also to corporate feminists à la Sandberg – their "progressive" mask has fallen. Liberal feminism met its Waterloo in the 2016 presidential election, when Hillary Clinton's hyped-up candidacy failed to ignite female voters. For good reason: Clinton embodied the deep and widening chasm between the advancement of elite women into top offices and progress in the lives of the vast majority.

Clinton's defeat is our wake-up call. It exposed the bankruptcy of liberal feminism and opened the way for a challenge from the left. The decline of liberalism creates a vacuum where we have the opportunity to build another feminism: a feminism that defines what constitutes a feminist issue differently, a different class position, different concerns – one that is radical and aims for change.

This manifesto is our attempt to proclaim the "other" feminism in question. Here, an imagined utopia is not sketched out, but rather the path to a just society is laid. What concerns us is to explain why feminists should choose the path of feminist strikes, why we need to join forces with anti-capitalist groups and others who criticize the system, and why our movement must be a feminism for the 99 percent. Only by connecting with anti-racists, environmentalists, labor leaders, and advocates for refugee rights can feminism meet the challenge of our time. By clearly rejecting "lean in" credos and the feminism of the 1 percent, our feminism can become a guiding light for all.

A new wave of militant feminist movements and activism gives us the courage to embark on this project. This is not the corporate feminism that has been a disaster for working women and is now bleeding out all credibility, nor is it the "microloan feminism" that claims to "empower" women in the Global South by lending them tiny amounts of capital. What gives us hope, rather, are the international feminist and women's strikes in 2017 and 2018. It is these strikes – and the increasingly well-organized movements forming around them – that provided the inspiration that became feminism for the 99 percent.

Cinzia Arruzza Tithi Bhattacharya Nancy Fraser