Against the grain? The craving for domestic femininity in a gender-egalitarian welfare state

Helene Aarseth

doi:10.1177/1350506820970241

Abstract

This article aims to develop new conceptions of the psychosocial dynamics that drive the re-romanticization of domestic femininity in current financialized capitalism. Feminist scholars have described this heightened cultivation of mothering as a reparative move in response to irreconcilable tensions between cultural ideals of the ‘balancing mother’ and ‘lean-in femininity’. This article adds a materialist-psychosocial lens to these conceptions, to enhance understanding of what drives this craving for domestic femininity. Drawing on a free-association narrative interview study with couples in the financial elite in the comparatively gender-egalitarian Norwegian context, I describe a specific emotional mechanism that resists democratization of gender in this specific group. The interviews reveal a felt need to cultivate ‘the human side of things’ at safe distance from the competitiveness of ‘hard-core finance’. The Nordic earner–carer model with its entwinement of care and professional pursuits, cultivated by the more self-fulfilment-oriented parts of the professional middle-class appears not only unwanted but threatening. In my analysis, I retrieve and develop a psychoanalytically inspired historical-materialist feminism, one that perceives of the gendered division of work as a split in modes of focusing human energy. I suggest that the resurgent cultivation of domestic femininity is nurtured by a self-energizing antagonism between competitive and relational practices. I further argue that the cultivation of domestic femininity in these financial couples points to a potential antagonism between the democratization of love and the specific anxiety-driven competitiveness to which this financial-elite group may be particularly susceptible.

Highlights

In an era characterized by unconditional celebration of autonomy, competitiveness and ‘lean-in-femininity’, Western countries are witnessing a re-romanticization of the nurturing mother (McRobbie, 2013; Solheim, 2007)
Accompanied by images of the ‘mompreneur’ – a woman able to combine homemaking with a small but meaningful enterprise from the kitchen table – this opting-out mother evokes a renaissance of the ‘angel of the house’ that flourished in the early phases of competitive capitalism (Davidoff, 1995; Solheim, 2007)
Today’s financial capitalism, with its market rationalities and competitive individualism, is accompanied by a movement ostensibly ‘against the grain’: a re-romanticization of domestic femininity. This revival of romantic imaginaries is apparent in the gender-egalitarian Nordic welfare states (Aarseth, 2015; Bach, 2014; Sørensen, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

In an era characterized by unconditional celebration of autonomy, competitiveness and ‘lean-in-femininity’, Western countries are witnessing a re-romanticization of the nurturing mother (McRobbie, 2013; Solheim, 2007). Today’s financial capitalism, with its market rationalities and competitive individualism, is accompanied by a movement ostensibly ‘against the grain’: a re-romanticization of domestic femininity. Somewhat surprisingly, this revival of romantic imaginaries is apparent in the gender-egalitarian Nordic welfare states (Aarseth, 2015; Bach, 2014; Sørensen, 2017). Despite being impacted by globalizing financial capitalism, increasing privatization and the spread of market competition, the Nordic countries remain characterized by ‘statemanaged capitalism’ (Fraser, 2016: 104) These countries are still characterized by extensive internalization of care and social reproduction through state provision of social welfare. Its entwinement of personal and professional life has a strong appeal among highly educated ‘self-fulfilment-oriented’ professionals (Aarseth, 2018; Kitterød and Lappegård, 2012)

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Conclusion