Catherine Rottenberg Books

High-powered women like Hillary Clinton, Ivanka Trump, Emma Watson, and Beyonce are increasingly identifying as feminists in mainstream media, signaling a rise in feminism's visibility and urgency. However, Catherine Rottenberg analyzes recent feminist manifestos, popular mommy blogs, and shows like The Good Wife, revealing that a variant known as neoliberal feminism has dominated the cultural landscape. This form of feminism prioritizes a happy work-family balance over a mass women's movement or social justice struggles. "Aspirational women" are encouraged to seek equilibrium between child-rearing and professional goals, sidelining traditional feminist objectives like equal rights and liberation. Rottenberg argues that neoliberalism, reducing issues to market calculations, co-opts feminism to address problems related to reproduction and care. She highlights how women of color and economically disadvantaged women often serve as unrecognized caregivers, enabling professional women to pursue balance, while neoliberal feminism legitimizes their exploitation and weakens structural critiques. This new feminist discourse has aligned with conservative agendas, as seen in Europe and the U.S., where women's rights have been misappropriated for anti-immigrant and military interventions. Despite movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, Rottenberg concludes by questioning how feminism can be reoriented and reclaimed as a genuine social justice

We are in the midst of a global crisis of care. How do we get out of it?The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care--childcare, healthcare, elder care--to care for the natural world. We live in a world where carelessness reigns, but it does not have to be this way.The Care Manifesto puts forth a vision for a truly caring world. The authors want to reimagine the role of care in our everyday lives, making it the organising principle in every dimension and at every scale of life. We are all dependent on each other, and only by nurturing these interdependencies can we cultivate a world in which each and every one of us can not only live but thrive.The Care Manifesto demands that we must put care at the heart of the state and the economy. A caring government must promote collective joy, not the satisfaction of individual desire. This means the transformation of how we organise work through co-operatives, localism and nationalisation. It proposes the expansion of our understanding of kinship for a more 'promiscuous care'. It calls for caring places through the reclamation of public space, to make a more convivial city. It sets out an agenda for the environment, most urgent of all, putting care at the centre of our relationship to the natural world.