We Were Feminists Once

advertising’s power is both cumulative and unconscious, it will absolutely continue to play a crucial role in the ongoing project of gender equality

choices, most women would likely go with the societal flow and take up the roles of wife and mother, rather than vie for a spot in a male-dominated workplace. For Mill, it wasn’t what women did with their choice that was important, but simply the fact that they had it.

And this empowerment was certainly of a piece with the neoliberal ideal in which individuals operate independent of cultural and economic influence, proving that all you need to succeed—or, in liberatory terms, to achieve equality—is the desire and will to do so