Unaffordable housing, poverty wages, universal healthcare, police violence; not the issues you ordinarily hear feminists talking about. But why should feminism only deal with issues that impact middle-class women? For most of us – for 99% of us – 'leaning in' at our corporate board room meeting is not an option.
This is a manifesto for the 99%. Those for whom increasing the minimum wage and implementing universal health and childcare would have a far greater impact on their lives that having more women CEOs. It is a manifesto that demands an end to mass incarceration and inhumane border regimes, the provision of safe and truly affordable housing, freedom for Palestine, an end to imperialist wars in the middle-east and much more.
From three of the organisers of the International Women's Strike, this manifesto argues that these are all feminist issues. Feminism shouldn't start – or stop – with seeing women represented at the top of society. It should start with the 99%.
About the Authors
Cinzia Arruzza is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of Dangerous Liaisons. The Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism (Merlin Press, 2013) and of A Wolf in the City. Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic (OUP, 2018). She was one of the main organizers of the International Women's Strike in the United States and is a member of the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine.
Tithi Bhattacharya is Associate Professor and Director of Global Studies at Purdue University. She is the author of The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal (OUP, 2005) and the editor of Mapping Social Reproduction Theory (Pluto Press, 2017). She was one of the main organizers of the International Women's Strike in the United States and is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review.
Nancy Fraser is Henry and Louise A. Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of Fortunes of Feminism. From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (Verso, 2013) and the coauthor, with Rahel Jaeggi, of Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory (Polity, 2018). A vocal supporter of the International Women's Strike, she coined the phrase `feminism for the 99%'.
Industry Reviews
"[The authors] cut through the corporate feminist "Lean In" noise to offer a feminism rooted not just in intersectionality of identity but also in economic justice. After years of books on feminism that have started to say the same thing, everyone (not just women!) should buy this one." - Vogue
"Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser ... have collaborated and written what is effectively a prospective programme for the global women's movement, a feminist manifesto for the 99%." - Socialism Today
"Fulfils the serious promise of its subtitle, 'a manifesto', as it makes feminism generally applicable and available - and addresses the crisis of capitalism as a feminist issue ... excellent" - Peace News
"a treatise for an intersectional, socialist feminism that centers collective power over power for just a few" - Jezebel
"a visionary, relatable and all-encompassing resource valuable both to the collective committed to achieving a feminist informed anti-capitalist society and to those who are yet to be haunted by the spectre" - Felicity Adams, Feminist Legal Studies
"[a] timely, fiery manifesto ... Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser herald the arrival of a new internationalist, anticapitalist feminist movement ... The feminism they describe is universalist and collaborative, in solidarity with antiracist, queer, environmental, migrant, and labor rights movements also endangered by capitalism." - Publishers Weekly
'An anti-capitalist feminism has become thinkable today,' Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser argue in Feminism for the 99 Per Cent, 'in part because the credibility of political elites is collapsing worldwide.' They are right." - Lorna Finlayson, London Review of Books
"A crucial formulation of an inclusive, transformative, and global social shift." - Quietus
"In a searing anti-capitalist manifesto written by three scholar-activists based in the US, Feminism for the 99% stands for allwho are exploited, dominated and oppressed. ... Combining theory, rhetoric and principle, it reads as a call to arms." - Race & Class
