Q&A with Laurie Penny

Image via @PennyRed

"The freedom that's offered to everyone under the terms of neoliberalism [is] freedom for a few to self-actualize in an extremely narrow, homogenous way by shopping and consuming, whilst the rest of us work long hours for low wages or no wages.

Freedom from economic exploitation isn't the sexy kind of female empowerment, but without it we won't be moving forward.

And the way in which women's labour is used and abused—the concentration of women in low-paid or unpaid caring and domestic roles, for example, is not only one of the things that sustains patriarchy, it also sustains capitalism.

Without the work that women do for free, the markets would be on their knees in a day. And yet, it just goes to show that there is, in fact, plenty of work out there, it's just that most of it is being done by women, for free.

There used to be a serious campaign for wages for housework—imagine if we had that kind of economic analysis of feminism today!"

Read the entire interview here.