In the context of Austerity, we witness an accelerating push to reduce and restrict the social power of women. This session will begin by tracing how multiple aspects of Austerity impact disproportionately on women, at the same time as women bear the brunt of the precarity and immiseration that are its footprint. The ruling powers attempt to trivialise and pathologise social suffering by applying labels of mental illness to those whose lives it dislocates, and especially those who resist. From a critical standpoint, this can be demystified as a form of “othering” discourse, that particulartly targets women.

This session presents the thesis that, underlying this push to marginalise women, is the attempt to coerce women into performing unlimited, unpaid caring work. For without this work, the austerity model cannot function. The tactics of Othering are used to disempower women in everyday life, including in social movements, and are largely unaddressed. This session will be an opportunity to put experiences of such tactics into context. But more importantly, it’s a chance to affirm our powers to disobey this paradigm both personally and collectively – through self-determination, and solidarity. In doing so, we can draw on rich examples of women internationally who are engaging in these struggles “from below.”