Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza and Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser

Named one of Vogue’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2019” This is a manifesto for the 99 percent Unaffordable housing, poverty wages, inadequate healthcare, border policing, climate change—these are not what you ordinarily hear feminists talking about. But aren’t they the biggest issues for the vast majority of women around the globe? Taking as its inspiration the new wave of feminist militancy that has erupted globally, this manifesto makes a simple but powerful case: feminism shouldn’t start—or stop—with the drive to have women represented at the top of their professions. It must focus on those at the bottom, and fight for the world they deserve. And that means targeting capitalism. Feminism must be anticapitalist, eco-socialist and antiracist.

I want this revolution, but this is not written for the 99%. Even for the already converted, at a would-be punchy fifty pages, it's repetitive and low on solid indictment and action to grab onto. The conclusions to each thesis come across as wispy as self-help fluff and the argumentation is too generalised to be rallying.

It's nice and short, but manages to talk about the intersectionality of feminism and other socioeconomic issues. It's the mortal enemy of the “Lean-in Feminism” being pedaled by the 1%.

The ideas are good, I just felt it was kinda weak as a manifesto.

It's a reminder of the injustice world in which we live right now. Even if we think that we fight for the same problems and issues, the book set an idea of how different can be seen the perspective of the same problem and how it can not be answer at the same way to everybody, knowing how “diverse” we are. It's just the description of the world that we're in now and how hypocrite are the governments that disguise their speeches full of “liberation” or “equality” when in the reality they are not interested in it.

Just two questions while finishing the book: 1. I know it is clear that the way this ideas should be taken to the real world can not be answered right now and will depend to the future context, but I am so curious to know how this demands can be resolved bases on their own concepts; 2. How can we fight against the leftist that comply with the same negative characteristics given in this book. We usually just condemn right and far-right parties for taking inequality, homofobic and racist decisions, but there are many examples around the world of the same measures taken by “left-wing” governments.