Women and the Politics of Class

"Johanna Brenner writes with a clarity of purpose that arises out of a lifetime of participation in the struggles of working-class women. A major voice on the American left." --Mike Davis, May 2000 Is there a future for feminism? The debate over the direction and politics of the women's movement has been joined recently by post-feminists and anti-feminists, in addition to competing feminist perspectives. In Women and the Politics of Class, Johanna Brenner offers a distinctive view, arguing for a strategic turn in feminist politics toward coalitions centered on the interests of working-class women. Women and the Politics of Class engages many crucial contemporary feminist issues-abortion, reproductive technology, comparable worth, the impoverishment of women, the crisis in care-giving, and the shredding of the social safety net through welfare reform and budget cuts. These problems, Brenner argues, must be set in the political and economic context of a state and society dominated by the imperatives of capital accumulation. Drawing on historical explorations of the labor movement and working-class politics, Brenner provides a fresh materialist approach to one of the most important issues of feminist theory today: the intersection of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class.