Capitalism has dominated the global economy for centuries, but how has this impacted women? I’d argue very poorly. Feminism exists as an ideology that interogates patriarchy, and that needs to include capitalism.
Recently, we hit Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. This is the date in the calendar (10th of July) that marks the portion of the year that black women have to work through essentially for free when compared to what white men earn. Later in the year, on the 20th of November, white women will also begin working for free. This is because women earn less money than men; this phenomenon is known as the pay gap.
The pay gap impacts different social groups with varying severity, but all people who are not straight white men experience a gap to some degree. We’ve heard a lot about the pay gap over the years; some people deny it exists, but cannot offer practical reasons why women, on average, earn less than their male counterparts. The pay gap is part of a cultural structure that positions women as secondary economic beings to men. When we combine this reality with the fact that women pay more for the same products as men (see the pink tax), have to pay tax on sanitary products (NOT a luxury by the way), and are aggressively capitalised on by the beauty and fashion industries, a disturbing portrait begins to take shape.
Capitalism in action
All of these realities trickle back to one thing: capitalism. Capitalism is the economic structure that dictates how people in most countries engage in the economy. In principle, it is a meritocratic system. At its core, capitalism hinges on the idea that the marketplace is free for anyone to set up a business, earn money, and succeed. All you need is to have a good enough idea that people want to buy, and boom, instant millionaire.
The reality is a little different. A quick look at the news can illustrate that capitalism has led us to an age where the vast majority of people are worse off than their parents, while a gaggle of billionaires fight over who can mortally wound the planet and its people more severely. For years now, we have been struggling through a cost of living crisis that has further pushed women into poverty, divided us as a society, and shows no signs of easing off. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.
How does this relate to feminism?
Capitalism is a tool of patriarchy. The system itself was established by male-dominated cultures in Europe beginning in the 16th century as the continent moved away from feudalism. By the 18th century, it was firmly established. The environment that capitalism found its origins within was inherently and violently oppressive to women and minorities. In 17th-century Europe, women did not have any social capital at all. They were excluded from the right to engage in the new economic system and, for centuries, were forced by a capitalistic patriarchy to cling to men for survival. The women who didn’t do this were maligned, excluded, and sometimes killed (or accused of being witches).
This narrative mostly applies to white women. Non-white women were often subjected to forced labour under a capitalistic system that propped up white supremacy by only allowing white men to have economic power. This is what led the Western world to some of its deadliest and most severe crimes against humanity in the form of European colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Within these systems, the bodies of non-white women were sold like products, defiled and broken. The slave trade and colonial mechanisms like the indentured servitude of Indians leave a lasting legacy that still impacts how people of colour are able to engage in capitalism today. It isn’t much of a shock that when black women are finally, after centuries, being paid for their labour that they earn significantly less than white people and especially white men.
Feminism exists to critique gender roles and the ways society divides us along the lines of gender. It is inherent, then, that capitalism must be scrutinised. Capitalism is the product of patriarchy, and it is one of its most pervasive tools.
The American dream is a lie
The United States is the global poster child for capitalism. Over the past century, a great deal of America’s time and energy has gone into squashing other economic models, namely communism, from taking root around the world. By definition, America positions itself as the capitalist Mecca. This is underpinned by the promise of the American dream. This is a falsehood sold to Americans that if they work hard enough, anything is possible.
The ethos of the American dream ignores the fact that people of colour and women were excluded from the game for centuries. It also doesn’t acknowledge that the foundations of this dream exist on land stolen from indigenous peoples, built up by forced labour from black people, for the pleasure of white men. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that most of the Western world has a version of this lie that it tells to itself, even if it is less formally codified than the American dream is. Guided by the spirit of capitalism, the USA and Europe pillaged the world to expand their wealth in a zero-sum game of global monopoly.
The idea that under a free market capitalist system, anyone can prosper is a lie. Women have had to fight for their seat at the table, largely entering the workforce in the 1970s and 1980s. This goes without mentioning that women of colour and women of lower socioeconomic backgrounds had no choice but to work (usually in severely underpaid jobs) for decades before. In our current society, the majority of women are in some form of work, but still represent smaller numbers of people in positions of leadership or top earners. This is because they enter the workforce with an inherent disadvantage.
Under capitalist patriarchy, we do not have a level playing field. Women and minorities have to navigate a world of work that was made by white men, for white men. Capitalist patriarchal structures have only widened opportunities enough to allow women and minorities into the world of work as a means to exploit and capitalise on their labour. That pay gap is starting to sting a little, isn’t it?
Is it getting worse?
When we acknowledge the inherent disadvantage that women and minorities face under capitalist systems, the idea of DEI starts to make a lot more sense. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) refers to a collection of practices and principles that have emerged in the world of work to offset some of the implicit disadvantages that face marginalised groups. Throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, it became a given that many corporations would at least pay lip service to these ideals. Under the Trump administration, however, DEI has been largely repealed and removed from practice. Inclusion in the workplace is becoming more and more elusive. Even outside the US, it is starting to become a relic of a time when white male capitalism was at least trying to keep the mask on.
Further to this, our culture is pivoting towards conservatism. In 2025, it isn’t unusual to see trad wives with millions of followers encouraging women to retreat back to a time when economic independence was not even thinkable. With the utter soul-crushing realities of work under late-stage capitalism, there is a current of women who are being encouraged to abandon it all in favour of a “simpler” existence. This is an existence akin to the carefully composed caricature of a 1950s housewife, existing entirely outside of financial freedom, existing only to be a supporting character in the lives of her husband and children. That’s just it, though. This image was a caricature. Another lie told by patriarchal capitalism to try and convince women that dependence on a man was normal and safe. There’s a reason women stepped out from the shadows of domestic submission and into economic independence. We know we cannot rely on men, and we have so much more work to do to level the playing field.
Capitalism is not a system that allows everyone the same power or freedom; it allows women to work for less money than men, or give up and become dependent on men for survival.
The monetisation of the body
Capitalism is also pushing some women in the polar opposite direction. Instead of a trad wife baking sourdough loaves, some women are being pushed to severely monetise their bodies. We need only see the stark rise in OnlyFans creators, some of whom are going to extremes, to see that under capitalism, the body itself is up for sale. While sex work itself is famously thought of as the oldest profession (some think it predates agriculture), under late-stage capitalism, it is entering new and disturbing places. In the saturated market of girls on film, in order to earn more, you have to do more. This creates a system where women extremely commodify their bodies for the consumption of men, projecting an image that confirms what capitalist patriarchy has always believed. Women’s bodies are products, not autonomous entities, and they are there to be consumed and used as men see fit. In a system defined by the rule of supply and demand, women’s bodies are on the front line.
The body is monetised in other ways too. Capitalism has never failed to invent new insecurities for women to develop in order to sell yet more products. Think about the amount of money that is spent annually on body hair removal ($3.6 billion) or makeup ($295.95 billion), and my point comes into alarming focus. While it’s okay to want to engage with the beauty industry, as I personally do, it isn’t without the harsh truth that so much of what we seek to change has been spoon-fed to us by generations of capitalist patriarchy. As I write this, I have acrylic nails, I’m wearing makeup, and my hair is dyed. All of these things I do because I like them and they make me feel confident. Underneath all of that, though, I can’t help but wonder if this is partially my conditioning as a femme-presenting person living in violent patriarchal capitalism.
The double bind
So, where does this leave us then? Capitalism isn’t exactly going away, while those who would have the power to change it are the same people who are making everything worse. I’m reminded of something that a close friend taught me about, the double bind. The double bind refers to aspects of our culture that are harmful for women or embedded in patriarchy, but we have no choice but to engage in anyway (and may even enjoy). We know that capitalism hurts women and minorities, and as feminists, we will always have to frame our critiques of our deeply misogynistic culture in the context of capitalism.
Does that mean we quit our jobs and go off-grid? For the majority of us, that is not going to be possible or practical. For most of us, we have little choice but to work to live, and by extension, we are subjected to capitalist oppression. What we can do is be mindful of how we engage in capitalism. In an era of rampant overconsumption where women are told they need everything from 24 karat gold Labubu’s to capsule wardrobes to mountains of clean girl skincare, be mindful that capitalism will always seek to exploit you. I know this all too well. In the era of 2016 makeu,p when every day a new eyeshadow palette or liquid lipstick was deemed the new must-have item, I accumulated a stack of makeup that largely went unused.
Capitalism got me down bad, making me believe that I needed to overconsume in order to feel fulfilled. I’m reminded of a fact about human evolution that struck me. Before the rise of agriculture, humans only had to engage in work for around three hours a day in order to meet all their needs. The rest of their time was spent in community, building relationships and telling stories. By looking at contemporary pre-agricultural culture,s we see that men and women tend to live more equal lives. This indicates that in all of our pasts, there was a time when gender wasn’t the divide it has morphed into under industrialised patriarchal capitalism.
While this idyllic past is a long-gone possibility, it reminds us that it is not what capitalism deems to be important, but what we deem to be important that matters. As feminists, we need to remember that liberation comes in spite of capitalism, and not through capitalism.
