Reminder to Progressives: Abortion is an Economic Issue
Bernie Sanders traveled to Nebraska this week to throw his support behind Omaha Democratic mayoral candidate, Heath Mello, who is running against the incumbent Republican mayor, Jean Stothert. A Mello win, Sanders has said, would give hope to other “progressive Democrats” in conservative states
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From: Has neoliberalism knocked feminism sideways?
"There is no place on Earth where neo-liberalism has not poisoned. It has allowed a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize personal profit. It has poisonous effects especially in the Third World, where imperial powers continue to pirate natural and human resources to fill the pockets of transnational capitalists. Initiated by Reagan and Thatcher, for the last two decades, neo-liberalism has become the dominant economic and political trend for much of the leftist (so they identify themselves) governments as well as the right.
However, as women fighting against global capitalism and its new phase, as women yearning for a better world where we will not be exploited and abused, we must go a step further into looking into this 'neo-liberalism' through the experiences of women. And it is not just about how women linearly experience it - we must go into the depths to manifest how neo-liberalism operates in a very gender-biased way.
Although the incorporation of Korean economy into the global capitalist system had already started around a decade ago, Korean people came to experience its destructive nature during and after the economic crisis of 1997. The structural adjustment program of the IMF shook the labour market and massive lay-offs were implemented. In particular, women workers were laid off first, and the working conditions of women workers fell to the ground.
The methods that the management used was subcontracting or abolishing those production lines and business sectors where women were predominant. Women in these places were usually typists or clerical assistants, who were considered not important and cumbersome, and thus provided the logic and justification for the lay-offs. Many companies would lay-off these women, and instead employ workers from dispatch companies - thus providing the management with ways in which to decrease labour costs and evade provision of insurances and benefits. Or in the case of banks, the same worker would be reemployed, but on a contract basis as irregular workers, again to decrease labour costs. Another method of laying off women workers or transforming them into irregular workers, was targeting foremost women who were married to someone in the same workplace, and also those who were pregnant or were on their maternal leave. They provided the management with strong justifications based on patriarchal values of 'women's place is at home'. This process of unjust and discriminatory lay-offs at the onset of the economic crisis saw the deterioration of maternal protection and women worker's rights in general. The achievements that the women worker's movement had accomplished over the last couple of decades were undermined.
Neo-liberal globalisation has also impeded the widening of gap between different classes of women. The living standard between women in the developed countries and those in the Third World is now incomparable, as is the situation inside Korea."
From: NEOLIBERALISM THROUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN
"On the other hand, the factory workers (80% of whom are women) barely make enough money to survive and are exposed to extremely dangerous chemicals and pollution on a daily basis. The film does a great job at exploring neoliberalism’s impacts on multiple levels: the community, the nation-state, and the world."
From: Neoliberalism’s Deleterious Effects on Women
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But why is it called "neoLIBERALISM"? That's what I don’t understand. NONE of the things your sources call "neoLIBERAL" sound remotely liberal to me.
I know the mindset you describe exists; I just don't understand labeking it as "neoliberal." It's not "liberal," in any way, shape, or form, sfaic. That’s why I called it a misnomer in a previous comment.
Sorry, but I just don't get what's "liberal" about neo"liberslism."
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"That's actually completely opposite of the origins of the term. Liberalism in political philosophy is not people-centered at all. It's capital-centered. Political liberalism is 19th century free market capitalism. Adam Smith is a liberal economist. John Locke is a liberal political theorist. Neo-liberalism refers to a return to those root ideas of capitalist market liberalism in the 1930s as a way of redeveloping an economic theory that reigned in complete laissez-faire capitalism but was not socialist. Privatization of industry in the name of efficiency is neo-liberal. Free trade is super neo-liberal.
Liberals traditionally are center/center-left. In the UK, the Liberal Democrats and Labor illustrate the differences between (neo)liberal political ideals and socialist political ideals. The progressive movements of the early twentieth century were in opposition to liberal political parties because liberalism is pretty exploitative of non-capital interests like small farmers and labor."
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So "liberal" means different things in different contexts? I guess I shouldn't be surprised since that's trùe of a lot of words.
From what I can see, a lot of people who identify as "liberal" don't fit tne definition of "liberal" used in political philodophy OR the definition of "neoliberal" as I uunderstand it. All the people that would fit the definition of "neoliberal" are people I would describe as conservatve! Which makes me feel like "neoliberal" is a confusing term that is more useful in a college course on political science/philosophy than in the "real" world. But maybe that's just me, lol!
Thanks for taking the time to explain all this. I still have VERY mixed feelings about the term "neoliberal," and tbh, I still find it alienating, but at least I see where it came from now..
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