Feminisms, Austerity and Domesticity

How can we understand intensifying gender inequalities against the backdrop of the rising visibility of popular mediated feminism? Can domestic cultures provide a space for a feminist response and resistance to austerity?

This book seeks to address these questions, exploring how the revival of domestic, traditionally feminine activities, such as crafting, baking and sewing, have gone hand-in-hand with the re-politicisation of domestic culture during an era of austerity. Jessica Martin provides an in-depth analysis of key public figures who forged their public personas by co-opting the harsh conditions of austerity, turning them into a ‘popular’ brand of neoliberal feminism.

Drawing on several case studies – including self-identifying feminists, domesticity experts and mothers such as Kirstie Allsopp, Justine Roberts, and Jen Gale, as well as the blogger, cook and anti-austerity activist Jack Munroe – Martin conceptualises the ‘austerity celebrity’ and explores how these figures have each developed their own style of domesticity activism and politicised domesticity.

She also argues that these celebrity responses span the political spectrum, be it Allsopp’s active championing of the ‘Big Society’, individualism and conservatism or Roberts’ mobilisation of mothers into a political pressure group active in UK parliamentary politics. Finally, Martin explains how the turn towards a nostalgic domesticity within austerity culture in the UK has intensified during the COVID-19 crisis, paving the way for discourse that accepts escalating inequalities under the guise of a particular notion of white nostalgic femininity, as well as the British blitz spirit, invoking a form of patriotic stoicism and nationalistic sentiment.