Empowered or Oppressed: Bargaining with Patriarchy on Social Media

• In Event: 30214 - Regular Session on Gender: Gendered Inequalities

Abstract

The online hashtag trend #tradwife has gained quite a traction across social media apps in the recent couple years. Upon a few quick scrolls one can easily come across an image of a “traditional” wife who stays home to take care of kids, does everything from scratch, takes good care of themselves as well as their children's health and sometimes even their home-schooling. This kind of content is very often coupled with a claim of choice and the liberation or empowerment that comes with that agency. Typically, the lifestyle is presented as an aspirational ideal that implies women’s autonomy, agency, and practice of individual choice. It is not uncommon to see elements of an anti-feminist discourse included in these representations of choice and empowerment. As such we are presented with a paradoxical concept of “anti-feminist liberation”. Reconstructing conventional, normative social expectations of womanhood as a desirable end product of individual choice, as an aspirational model of empowered femininity in fact dovetails with the ongoing context of repeated conservative backlash on women’s rights, while at the same time reinforcing stratifications of class between women. In an attempt to detangle this contradiction, our study examines this popular trend in the light of feminist scholarly literature on neoliberal feminine subjectivity and the limitations of the neoliberal conceptions of choice, agency, and empowerment. Utilizing a critical approach to neoliberal feminine subjectivity, our aim is to contribute to the debates on contemporary gender politics by providing a grounded example of it from popular culture.

Authors

• Rebekah Danielle Villanueva, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• Canan Tanir, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley