‘Power of economics without power in economics’: examinations of gender/power in the neoliberal economic order

Gender is a powerful governing principle in neoliberal economic logics yet is most often employed as a characteristic of economic agents rather than constitutive of a powerful economic rationale. In this paper, I utilize feminist typologies of power to explore the ways in which the normative and operational neoliberal economic logics directly address women’s access to power. I employ the term ‘gender/power’ to indicate that gender and power cannot be understood as distinct treatments, but that gender is always implicated in and foundational of power structures and relationships. Through this analysis, I show that neoliberal ideologies neutralized much of the collective power-with of early feminist movements and have primarily acted to reinforce power-over women, as labourers, mothers, entrepreneurs, and subjects. I argue that neoliberal promises of market empowerment have been realized not in power to, as is emphasized in neoliberal discourses, but in power-within cultivated through gendered neoliberal feminist subjectivities of self-confidence and self-responsibility. In situating this analysis within prevailing neoliberal family rationalities, I suggest that feminist conceptualizations of power-through be expanded to include not just social relational dimensions, but market relations as well (e.g. managers, clients). Finally, I suggest three gendered standpoints of gender/power that should be engaged by economic analysis, academics, and policymakers to look past ‘one-size-fits-all’ logics and to increase the power of gender in economics.