Seminar Implementing Austerity Disciplining the Household 8211 Gender Relations in the Economic Crisis

The rise of authoritarian forms of neoliberalism across Europe is most visibly evident in the evolution of the Eurozone’s institutional architecture. The construction of a pre-emptive, punitive conditionality regime has hardened notions of ‘best practice’ into generic and universal prescriptions for all Eurozone countries. As many have noted, the effects of such a regime are strongly variegated, with several countries experiencing profound and traumatic crises. Moreover, such variegation reflects the highly asymmetrical politico-economic relationships between core and periphery Eurozone countries. However, less has been said on the need to consider ‘public’ and ‘private’ together as well as ‘core’ and ‘periphery’. The constitutionalisation of austerity across the Eurozone is a key part of the ‘public’ dimensions of authoritarian neoliberalism, and full consideration of the variegated impact of this regime can only be achieved with due attention being given to the so called ‘private’ dimensions as well. Indeed, the crisis of social reproduction has come in many forms, including widespread evictions, mass emigration, and the enforced increase in the provision of unpaid social care. Unsurprisingly, this is a highly ethnical and gendered process which disproportionately affects women. We will, after a critical discussion of the ‘Economic Governance’ architecture, analyze the powerful effects of generic policy and institutional measures on the household in Europe’s periphery, using e.g. Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Iceland as example cases. We retrace how the denial of political rights via increasingly non-democratic policy-making processes is mirrored by the attack on economic and social rights in the form of households which are commodified by compulsion rather than by choice and compare these to similar effects of economic crises in Latin America. Short Syllabus (The full syllabus will be provided in the first session): Barry Ursula, and Pauline Conroy. 2014. Ireland in Crisis. Women, austerity and inequality, In Women and Austrity. The Economic Crisis and the Future for Gender Equality, ed. Maria Karamessini and Jill Rubery, pp 186-206, London: Routledge. Benería, Lourdes. 1992. -The Mexican Debt Crisis: Restructuring the Economy and the Household.” In Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty and Women’s Work, ed. Lourdes Benería and Shelley Feldmann, pp.83-104. Boulder: Westview Press. Bieling, Hans-Jürgen. 2012. -European Governance: On the Relationship between Democratic and Non-democratic Deliberation within the European Multi-level System.” World Political Science Review 8(1): 201-216. González Gago, Elvira, and Marcelo Segales Kirzner. 2014. Women, Gender Equality and the Economic Crisis in Spain. In Women and Austrity. The Economic Crisis and the Future for Gender Equality, ed. Maria Karamessini and Jill Rubery, pp.228-247. London: Routledge. Griffin, Penny. 2012. -Gendering Global Finance: Crisis, Masculinity, and Responsibility.” Men and Masculinities 16(1): 9-34. Harcourt, Wendy. 2014. -Women and the European Crisis.” The Economic and Labour Relations Review 25(3): 455-464. Young, Brigitte. 2003. -Financial Crises and Social Reproduction: Asia, Argentina and Brazil.” In Power, Production and Social Reproduction: Human In/security in the Global Political Economy, ed. Isabella Bakker and Stephen Gill, pp.103-124. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. FB 05 Gesellschaftswissenschaften Uni Kassel SoSe 2015 Global Political Economy Prof. Dr. Wöhl Stefanie