Speaker
Professor Jo Littler, Goldsmiths University of London
Abstract
The brutal expansion of right-wing politics in recent years has, to a not insignificant degree, been shaped through changing constellations of gender and the formation and crystallisation of distinct social types. The resurgence of aggressive, patriarchal masculinities and the ‘manosphere’ of the new right has for instance been popularised and now mainstreamed through Trump’s ‘broligarchs’, both online and offline. Their gendered counterparts include the tradwife, who sells a glossy spin on the Fordist dream of domestic servitude; and what we might call the authoritarian feminist, or the female authoritarian capitalist: women in the public sphere who push increasingly far right agendas, including politicians like Georgia Meloni and Liz Truss and public figures like ‘Britain’s Strictest Headmistress’, Katherine Birbalsingh. In this paper I consider the relationship of these latter figures - these right-wing spokeswomen - to feminism, meritocracy and the shifting sands of the long neoliberal conjuncture of the past 50 years, before discussing the alternatives presented by left feminisms.
Biography
Jo Littler is Professor of Culture, Media and Social Analysis at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her most recent books are Left Feminisms (2023); with The Care Collective, The Care Manifesto (2020); and Against Meritocracy (2018).
