Capitalism and gender inequality are intertwined – only a radical break from the system solves

In spite of this increased violence, and the inequality that is inherent in neoliberalism, in the last quarter of the twentieth century the world's institutions reached a consensus: they joined together in hailing the goal of gender equality. Ironically, this was at the very moment when we were witnessing the limits, the exh- austion, of the equality paradigm. The notion of equal opportunity was, in any case, incapable of withstanding the structures of gender: the sexual division of labour, and violence as a resource in the making and doing of masculinity. But with the collapse of the postwar consensus on welfare states and the mixed economy, the equality paradigm is now being defeated by the counter-revolutionary, neoliberal priorities of the world's financial institutions. They preach equal opportunity, but in practice produce a 'regressive modernisation' that reshapes but continues the patriarchal division of labour, and of traditional masculinities and femininities. So, beware the liberation language of global capitalism: it rules the world, and it deploys the language of freedom, choice and competition to oust solidarity, cooperative creativity and equality. After the deluge of state communisms, the world is quivering with resistance but struggles to find new ideological and institutional forms for those great values of solidarity, co-operation, creativity and equality values that are crucial for gender equality. In this moment of capitalism's hegemony --its apparent inevitability, invincibility and normality--the language of the marketplace appears not only to govern the economy, but life itself. It is a lie, of course. Capitalism does not do life. And that lie is never more exposed in the twenty-first century than when we bring to it the light of gender and the unsaid--the silences and secrets that are knotted in the articulation of capitalism and patriarchy. 'Woman' as commodity, as carer, as producer and reproducer (though rarely hailed, it appears, as taxpayer and never as citizen) is positioned anew as Other; the sovereignty of ideologies of masculinity is simultaneously rattled and reinstated. Gender, uniquely, exposes the limits of this articulation, its contradictions and --most important--its unsustainability. The old sexual contract is recognised as unsustainable but retained in modernised form. Neoliberal neo-patriarchy is the new articulation of male domination. But gender, uniquely, exposes the limits of neoliberal hegemony, its contradictions and--most important--its unsustainability. Though neoliberal neo-patriarchy is hegemonic, it is an unstable site of torrid angst, complaint and trouble --and radical alternatives. As Leonard Cohen saw: There is a crack in everything There's a crack in everything That's how the light gets in (Anthem). Although gender remains an often invisible, or at best marginal, theme in radical and party political discourses, it takes us to the fissures and fault-lines, to the unsustainabilities, of the new, global capitalist settlement. For gender, like nature, is omni-relevant: it is everywhere, in everything. The new global settlement is nothing if not a new sexual settlement. Global capitalism works with patriarchal principles, institutions, cultures and psyches. So, our liberation from this tragedy is inconceivable--it is, literally, unthinkable--without feminism. Before returning to the theme of patriarchy's violence, I want to turn now to talk about the continuing sexual division of labour within Britain. I then look at the ways in which the global reach of neoliberalism is undermining equality and reconfiguring gender in Asia and South America.