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Sexual and Economic Justice VOLUME 4 SEXUAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE OTHER VOLUMES TOWARD A VISION OF SEXUAL IN THE SERIES AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE VOLUME 1 Written by Kate Bedford and Janet R. Jakobsen Responding to Violence, Published by the Barnard Center for Research on Women Rethinking Security: RESPONDING TO VIOLENCE, RETHINKING SECURITY Policy Alternatives POLICY ALTERNATIVES FOR BUILDING HUMAN SECURITY for Building Human In recent years, the Barnard Center for Research on Women has made a concerted Security effort to link feminist struggles to those for racial, economic, social, and global nfs justice. We have built invaluable cooperative relationships with a far-reaching 1 new feminist solutions network of scholars, activists, and artists who contribute to the long struggle to make our world more just. This report is based on the Virginia C. Gildersleeve Lecture and colloquium VOLUME 2 Women, Work, and the at Barnard College, with keynote speakers Josephine Ho and Naomi Klein. Academy: Strategies for The participants in the colloquium have all made significant contributions to WOMEN, WORK, AND THE Responding to ‘Post-Civil our understandings of global justice as activists, artists, and scholars who have ACADEMY STRATEGIES FOR RESPONDING TO ‘POST�CIVIL Rights Era’ Gender explored the meanings of economic justice and sexual justice and have worked RIGHTS ER A ’ GENDER DISCRIMINATION Discrimination to build links between these spheres. The aim of the workshop was to articulate nfs connections between struggles for sexual justice and economic justice and to 2 new feminist solutions develop new visions of how different people and movements might come together in their efforts to create justice. This report provides a synthesis of the short thought papers the participants developed in preparation for the colloquium VOLUME 3 The Work-Family Dilemma: (available at www.barnard.edu/bcrw/justice/index.htm) and their conversations A Better Balance during the workshop. We thank them for their commitment, intelligence, and THE WORK- FAMILY DILEMMA generosity: A BETTER BALANCE Policy Solutions for All New Yorkers Radhika Balakrishnan Kamala Kempadoo Kate Bedford Naomi Klein nfs 3 new feminist solutions Suzanne Bergeron Gabrielle Le Roux Elizabeth Bernstein Irene León Jon Binnie Njoki Njoroge Njehû To download any report in the Ann Cammett Rhacel Salazar Parreñas New Feminist Solution series, visit www.barnard.edu/bcrw Davina Cooper Brooke Gruundfest Schoepf or call 212.854.2067 to request Lisa Duggan Stephanie Seguino a free printed copy. Mary Margaret Fonow Svati Shah Gisela Fosado Anna Marie Smith Claudia Hinojosa Neferti Tadiar Josephine Ho Ara Wilson Janet Jakobsen The publication of this report was supported by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation. The lectures and accompanying workshop were made possible by the pivotal support of the Overbrook Foundation and the Ford Foundation. INTRODUCTION SEXUAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE Two struggles for global justice lie at the heart of reproductive rights and bodily integrity have provided this report, which is based on conversations held at crucial models for other movements organizing at the Barnard College in the fall of 20071: the multipronged international level, these struggles may be regarded effort to secure greater economic justice in our as peripheral, or nonmaterial, by people interested societies and our lives, and the complex struggle to in challenging global economic injustice. It has also achieve sexual justice in our societies and our lives. been hard for some activists working in reproductive Specifically, this report asks: How do we conceive rights struggles to raise issues of economic justice of the connections between the too-often radically (Balakrishnan) and/or lesbian sexuality (Hinojosa). separated arenas of sexual and economic justice? How Likewise, within academia, conversations about do we understand recent changes in (inter)national poverty, structural adjustment, and neoliberalism have political economy in relation to sexuality? What occurred largely apart from research on sexual rights, possibilities—if any—do contemporary formulations the emergence of “global gay” identity, sex tourism, of global capitalism open up for alternative sexual trafficking, and sex work. This gap exists even as issues politics, and conversely what new sexual norms and like trafficking—once concerned mainly with sweatshop regulations are being forged in the neoliberal world labor—have come to be synonymous with sexuality. order? What can we learn from those who work at the On the one hand, as one of our participants put it, intersection of these struggles for justice, and how, “sexual justice and economic justice do not enjoy the fundamentally, can we facilitate their efforts? same kind of legitimacy in discussion. A lot of talk about sexuality is completely forbidden, is criminal” Obstacles and Dominant Framings (Ho). In parts of Africa, for instance, “the notion of To answer those questions, it is necessary to move economic justice is widely embraced,” with church beyond the perceived separation between these leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and local, two issues and the movements with which they are national, and transnational campaigns foregrounding associated. Contemporary movements for global the term. But “sexual justice does not enjoy the same economic justice have not tended to consider issues of ‘respectability’ or support” (Njehû). Meanwhile, in sexuality relevant to their work, while campaigns for other circles, particularly in the US academy, it can sexual rights rarely foreground economic concerns. be less difficult to talk about certain gay and lesbian For example, although feminist struggles for rights than to talk about poverty or class inequality (Smith). The division between sexual and economic 1. References to participants in parentheses are to the colloquium justice has also been named and further entrenched thought papers to be found at www.barnard.edu/bcrw/justice/index.htm 3 Toward a Vision of Sexual and Economic Justice THE division Between sexual and economic justice Has BEEN named and entrencHED IN A NUMBER of waYS—as A division Between minoritY and majoritY Politics, social Politics and cultural Politics, recoGnition and redistriBution, need and desire. PerHAPS most damaGinGLY, it Has Been understood as A division Between real Politics—war and THE economY, for examPle—and THE frivolous, unreal concerns of A wealtHY Western GAY elite. THese divisions are GettinG Harder to sustain. in a number of ways—as a division between minority In the United States, for example, one major means and majority politics, social politics and cultural of acquiring health insurance is to be placed on the politics, recognition and redistribution, need and health plan of a partner, such that sexual connection is desire (Duggan; León; Shah; Wilson). Perhaps most also a connection to health care. Meanwhile a study of damagingly, it has been understood as a division between more than 4,000 people in the European Community real politics—war and the economy, for example—and found that while a man’s income increases, on the frivolous, unreal concerns of a wealthy Western gay average, by 11 percent after divorce, a woman’s falls elite (Binnie). by around 17 percent, making divorce a key economic These divisions are getting harder to sustain, and the justice issue for many feminists (Jansen et al. 2007). interconnection between sexual and economic justice These interconnections are also evident on the is now recognized, at least in some places. Feminists macroeconomic level. For example, reproductive have long argued that decisions about intimacy are health services have been devastated by funding cuts heavily influenced by resources (Hinojosa), and they in many parts of the world, and progress in health have repeatedly insisted that neither reproductive indicators has been reversed in some areas: between rights nor sexual autonomy can be discussed apart 1990 and 2000 maternal deaths rose in numerous from economic justice. Hence at the interpersonal countries, from the poorest (Nicaragua, Tanzania, level we already know that women who are in a Zimbabwe, Mauritania), to middle-income nations weaker economic position than men are less able to (Panama, Russia), to some of the richest (United negotiate safer sex (Seguino; Gruundfest Schoepf). States and United Kingdom) (World Bank 2006). We also know that one’s choice of intimate relational Structural-adjustment measures have also damaged bonds can have profound economic consequences. the health infrastructure of many nations, reducing 4 NEW FEMINIST SOLUTIONS KEY TERMS NeolIberALIsm We understand neoliberalism as an We emphasize, however, that on individual responsibility are core economic, political, and cultural shift neoliberalism and the precariousness political strategies associated with the that has produced a global activist that it entails is about more than term (Rose 1999). response. As a set of macroeconomic economics and employment-related However recent moves to make the policies, neoliberalism prioritizes a changes. For its implementation, free market model more sustainable free-market model of growth that neoliberalism relies on varied political and inclusive­­—themselves promoted rests on deregulation, free trade, strategies. To those who trace the by global protest and crisis—have privatization, and retrenchment of experience of neoliberalism to General raised new questions about the state-provided social services. These Pinochet’s Chile, the
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