The Eco-Crisis is a Feminist Crisis | Natasha Walter
The only liveable future is a feminist future—but only if we shape what feminism must become.
The women's movement sprang into being in a different world. How must it adapt to meet the challenges we face today?
Natasha Walter is a journalist, the founder of the Women for Refugee Women Charity, and the author of multiple books, including her most recent, Feminism for a World on Fire (UK version and US version out today). In it, Natasha investigates the successes and weaknesses of the women's movement, taking a scalpel to the most recent decades of feminist thought and action and revealing how they have been shaped by neoliberalism. She joins me to discuss just that, explaining how our hyper individualist economy has created a feminist culture which is more invested in the individuals success than in structural change and collective liberation. From there, we discuss care as an organising principle, and why this feminist school of thought must be seeded in climate camps, from degrowth theory to mobilisation.
We also explore the effects of a neoliberal feminism on young women around the world, many of whom are now turning their backs on the women's movement to instead pledge allegiance to "tradwives" and other typically patriarchal forms of social organisation. We ask: What is feminism failing to provide these young women? And what about the women's movement needs to change to confront and overcome the political, economic and ecological crises which threaten our very future?
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