Nancy Fraser describes how feminism took an intersectionist approach, allying with other emancipatory movements around class, race, and sexuality to challenge structural subordination of women. However, in the Reaganite–Thatcherite 1980s, feminism was confronted with a very different political animus that prioritized privatization, deregulation, and the elimination of capital controls and that emphasized competition rather than welfare. In this context, Fraser sees feminist ideals being resignified, surrendering their broader claims for social justice in favor of the rhetoric of recognition. Feminism became absorbed into identity politics, and issues of culture were elevated above those of political economy. Out of this shift emerged “a new romance of female advancement and gender justice” under neoliberalism that overlooked the grotesque inequalities, job insecurity, low wages, and negligible welfare provision resulting from reforms designed to promote individualism and discourage broader solidarities.

XREF: Echoes the broader scholarship on neoliberal co-optation of emancipatory movements (e.g., Brown, Harvey). Fraser's resignification thesis resonates with critiques of identity politics displacing class analysis. SEED: Potential essay angle: how contemporary women's-advancement discourse (Lean In feminism, corporate DEI) mirrors the 1980s pattern of delegating structural critique while embracing individualist meritocracy.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 186