Neoliberal Feminism and Women's Protest Motivation

Neoliberal Feminism and Women's Protest Motivation

A popular form of neoliberal feminism seeks to advance gender equality in leadership and beyond by encouraging women to be resilient as individuals. By locating career advancement as within an individual's control, recent research has shown that this focus subtly shifts the blame for gender ine...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology of women quarterly Vol. 48; no. 3; pp. 335 - 358
Main Authors: Bongiorno, Renata, Ryan, Michelle K., Gibson, Olivier, Joyce, Hannah
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-09-2024
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Action control
Blame
Career advancement
Change agents
Collective action
College students
Feminism
Gender equity
Gender inequality
Inequality
Leadership
Motivation
Neoliberalism
Resilience
Sex discrimination
Women
Working women
neoliberal feminism
collective protest
gender inequality
individual resilience
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Summary:A popular form of neoliberal feminism seeks to advance gender equality in leadership and beyond by encouraging women to be resilient as individuals. By locating career advancement as within an individual's control, recent research has shown that this focus subtly shifts the blame for gender inequality onto women and reduces support for needed structural changes to tackle gender discrimination. We extend research into neoliberal feminism by examining anticipated negative effects on women's protest motivation. Across four studies in the United Kingdom (total N = 1,168), undergraduate women students and employed women with university degrees in both the control and resilience conditions first read about gender inequality. Participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions then read messages promoting individual resilience as key to women's advancement (Study 1–3) or participated in activities designed to build their own resilience as individuals to help them advance (Study 4). In Studies 1, 3, and 4, participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions compared to the control had lower collective action intentions – a negative effect that was either indirect, via reduced perceptions of gender discrimination (Studies 1 and 4) and reduced anger over inequality (Study 1), or direct (Study 3). Together, these studies provided partial support for our hypothesis that neoliberal feminism can undermine women's protest motivation. Future research can help establish how contextual and other factors contribute to the strength of these effects and explore how feminists can better harness messages of resilience. To advance gender equality, our findings suggest that advocates should focus less on individualistic solutions and more on addressing structural barriers, laying the groundwork for effective protest action and social change. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843241238176.
ISSN:0361-6843
1471-6402
DOI:10.1177/03616843241238176