{"id":449299,"date":"2021-03-29T08:28:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T08:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/?p=449299"},"modified":"2021-03-29T08:29:11","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T08:29:11","slug":"why-do-we-need-a-radical-feminist-movement-in-moldova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/why-do-we-need-a-radical-feminist-movement-in-moldova\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do we need a radical feminist movement in Moldova?"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 7<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

In choosing the title for this article, I am at the same time afraid I lost part of my readership and hopeful that maybe I managed to provoke some to click and skim through. \u201cFeminism\u201d is a scary word in our society, but regardless of your gender identity, feminism concerns you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone is already over 8th of March and already looking forward to the next red day in the calendar. But I am still processing the amalgam of pictures and messages shared on the 8th of March. Only a few years back this day was a normality in my everyday life – the day we are grateful to the women in our lives and our mothers for their unconditional love, patience and \u201cquiet suffering\u201d – which in itself should be a point of outcry not celebration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a child I never really questioned this day. In fact, I was even feeling a little guilty. How come women have a whole day dedicated to themselves, a national holiday, but men don\u2019t? What an injustice!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, thankfully, I feel differently. The multitude of flowers, sweet messages, congratulations left a bitter taste in my mouth. How come every Moldovan knows about 8th of March, but only so few understand the meaning of this day?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

There is, at the same time, a wave of influencers and so-called coaching gurus promoting #girlboss and #leanin feminisms, a mainstream brand of woman empowerment that is very much fitting into the capitalist economic order: As long as my t-shirt says \u201cfemale empowerment\u201d I don\u2019t care about the woman in an Asian sweatshop who made it for pennies.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this article, I again put on my political glasses and aim to dismantle the romanticism surrounding mainstream feminism that seems to have pierced through our society and to reflect on the need for <\/span>radical feminism in our own Moldovan context<\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is feminism?<\/b><\/p>\n

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie mentions in her book \u201cWe Should All be Feminists\u201d, the word \u201cfeminist\u201d and the idea of feminism is limited by stereotypes and is loaded with a lot of negative baggage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some think feminists are sad women who can\u2019t find husbands or women who hate men. Others think feminists are women who don\u2019t take care of themselves, who don\u2019t wear makeup nor high heels. Or that they are women who always have to be in charge and therefore are bossy and bitchy.<\/span> The narrative differs, but the essence stays the same – a feminist is often portrayed as a woman, followed by a negative description. This negativity stems from gender expectations, that boys should be one way – tough, rational, powerful – and girls should be another way – polite, quiet, caring. And when we transcend these gender expectations, society raises its whip. Gender expectations are cruel for both girls and boys, for when boys are taught to suppress their emotions and girls to be submissive – everyone suffers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are other, even more worrying patterns in Moldovan public discourse, where people with a lot of reach call feminism and gender related issues \u201cWestern values\u201d, alien to our culture, region and history. For politicians and other public figures making such claims, we shall point out to a historical fact. The women\u2019s movement in our region started in <\/span>czarist Russia<\/span><\/a> and kickstarted the February Revolution. On the 8th of March 1917, female textile workers in Petrograd demonstrated and demanded the end of the czarist regime, protested against the food shortages and the end of World War I.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Internationally, the movement was permeated with socialist ideology. <\/span>In 1857<\/span><\/a> female garment workers in New York took to the streets to demand political emancipation. In Europe, <\/span>the movement<\/span><\/a> took a similar stance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSocialist women of all countries, fight in unity with the Socialist International against the war. The modern war is mass destruction and mass killing. But war is only the expansion of the mass killing that capitalism is perpetrating every hour of every day against the proletariat. Year after year, hundreds of thousands of victims fall on the battlefield of labour in the capitalist developed nations \u2013 more victims than in any war. Women are a growing number of these victims. War is only the maddest form of mass exploitation through capitalism.\u201d<\/span><\/i> declared Clara Zetkin, a German communist activist and advocate for women’s rights, in 1912 at the first International Socialist Women’s Conference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 8th of March, the International Women\u2019s Day was marked by a revolutionary spirit. Feminism was perceived and intended as a <\/span>radical tool<\/span><\/a> for fighting back against structural violence and injustice. The word radical means addressing at the root. The women who fought for political emancipation were not just fighting for women to gain the same economic and political rights as men. They were fighting against an economic and political system based on oppression and exploitation that affected both men and women.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What we celebrate today however resembles nothing of the radicality of the incipient demonstrations. Today, we are likely to experience and see a different brand of feminism, one compatible with the corporate capitalist order.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the 1970s a <\/b>new brand of feminism<\/b><\/a> has emerged, one emphasizing women as self-sufficient individuals.<\/b> It focused on women\u2019s right to be independent financially, the right to develop one\u2019s skills and abilities, the right to control fertility, the right to participate in the market economy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This coincided with the restructuring of the global economy to a neoliberal order looking to cut costs (by paying women less) and revive the pace of growth:<\/span><\/p>\n