A popular form of neoliberal feminism seeks to advance gender equality in leadership and beyond by encouraging women to be resilient as individuals. But locating career advancement as within an individual's control subtly shifts the blame for gender inequality onto women and reduces support for needed structural changes to tackle gender discrimination. We want to understand how this could reduce women's participation in protests and collective action.
By: Renata Bongiorno, Michelle Ryan, Olivier Gibson and Hannah Joyce
Posted on 3 September 2024
Key findings
Across four studies in the United Kingdom, undergraduate women students and employed women with university degrees in both the control and resilience conditions first read about gender inequality.
Participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions then read messages promoting individual resilience as key to women's advancement or participated in activities designed to build their own resilience as individuals to help them advance.
In Studies 1, 3, and 4, participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions compared to the control had lower collective action intentions – a negative effect that was either indirect, via reduced perceptions of gender discrimination (Studies 1 and 4) and reduced anger over inequality (Study 1), or direct (Study 3).
Together, these studies provided partial support for our hypothesis that neoliberal feminism can undermine women's protest motivation. Future research can help establish how contextual and other factors contribute to the strength of these effects and explore how feminists can better harness messages of resilience.
To advance gender equality, our findings suggest that advocates should focus less on individualistic solutions and more on addressing structural barriers, laying the groundwork for effective protest action and social change.
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