Free market feminism? the political economy of women's writing

E. J. Clery

pp. 43-60

in: Jennie Batchelor, Gillian Dow (eds), Women's writing, 1660-1830, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

In this essay, I will argue that the development of research into early women's writing has been traumatically shaped by the rise of neo-liberal ideology from the 1980s onwards. Reaganomics in the United States and Thatcherism in Britain were inimical to the project of recovering the lost voices of female authors. The social conservatism of the movement reinforced the marginalization of historically subordinate groups. The tightening of the fiscal reins on universities was designed to narrow the curriculum and make it the servant of economic growth. The stress on financial incentives in work seemed to relegate the history of women even more conclusively to outer darkness.