Intersectionality theory and governmentality: bringing together what belongs together?

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.9.2.0079
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Date: 01 December 2015
• Pages: 79-93
• Author: Christiane Bomert

Work organisation, labour & globalisation Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2015 79

Intersectionality theory and

governmentality:

bringing together what belongs together?

Christiane Bomert

Christiane Bomert is a Research Fellow in the Centre for

European Gender Studies (ZEUGS) and in the Institute of

Political Science at the University of Münster, Germany.

ABSTRACT

The current care crisis and the increasing outsourcing of care work in the

context of neoliberal reorganisation are major issues currently being addressed

within feminist science. On the basis of these gendered characteristics of

the new global division of labour, this theoretical article aims to bring two

heavily discussed approaches in this eld together: intersectional theory and

the Foucauldian concept of governmentality. The article suggests that there

are three different theoretical or methodological ways that these complex

approaches might be combined. Discussing the mutual benet, it then goes on

to deal critically with the concept of intersectionality as a current dominant and

widespread feminist theory, which tries to capture social complexity.

Introduction

‘Behind every successful woman is a nanny’. This cynical adage pointedly refers to the

current care crisis and thereby to the increasing outsourcing of care work in the

context of neoliberal reorganisation. The underlying reason for this outsourcing is

that women are exposed to two different and conflicting modes of subjectification: on

the one hand, they have to manage their daily work as an employee, and on the other

they are expected to embody femininity and be caring and emotional individuals

(Ludwig, 2006). This implies that the rising labour participation of women and the

absence of fair gender-based labour division in the home generate a need for (paid)

care workers, and these workers are often recruited internationally. Through these

international ‘care chains’ (Hochschild, 2001), care work is passed on to other women

of different classes and ethnicities. Furthermore, these chains display the continuously

global intermixture of state, market and families as a result of neoliberal structuring of

the labour market.