Webinar - Neoliberalism and Feminist Discourse: Between Assimilation and Everyday Resistance
Webinar - Neoliberalism and Feminist Discourse: Between Assimilation and Everyday Resistance
In recent decades, neoliberalism has become more than just economic policies that impose privatization and diminish the role of the state. Rather, it has transformed into a soft symbolic system that infiltrates the details of daily life and reshapes the feminist subject according to market conditions.
Concepts such as "empowerment" and "success" have been redefined to serve the logic of individual performance, not collective justice. Thus, power has colluded with the market and patriarchal structures to create a hegemony that forces women to police themselves and re-produce their roles within a consumerist and normative framework.
But from the heart of this hegemony, a multifaceted resistance has emerged: from peasant women who have rejected imposed empowerment projects, to urban activists who have deconstructed the illusion of the "superwoman," to attempts to build trans-class feminist alliances that remain limited but promising.
In this context, the Arab NGO Network for Development and the Women's Rights Action Group organized a second virtual symposium this year, titled "Neoliberalism and Feminist Discourse: Between Assimilation and Everyday Resistance," on July 28, 2025, to discuss a paper prepared by expert Jihan Abu Zeid.
The paper highlights the multi-layered feminist resistance that emerges from diverse sites and experiences, not as a unified discourse, but rather as a living fabric of practices and narratives. It maps this hegemony analytically, opening the way for research into how to reclaim the political meaning of feminism outside the conditions of the market and funding.
Discussion Topics:
- Neoliberalism as a symbolic force reshaping empowerment, success, and the feminist self
- Models of grassroots feminist resistance: From silent negotiation to alternative organizing
- Is it possible to bridge the gap between elite discourse and grassroots experiences?
- How can feminist organizations rethink their organizational tools and internal discourse?
How do we protect feminist discourse from institutional disempowerment and soft assimilation?
Discuss the paper:
Dr. Salma Al-Nims: Development and Gender Consultant
Anas Al-Hasnawi: Expert in issues related to development effectiveness
With the paper's author: Expert Gihan Abu Zaid
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