Ezra's Bookshelf

Feminist International

by Verónica Gago, translated by Liz Mason-Deese · 340 pages · ~6 hrs

Politics & GovernmentGender & Feminism

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The women's strike has emerged as a powerful political form, and Argentine feminist Veronica Gago theorizes its radical potential from her position within the movement. Writing from Buenos Aires, where massive mobilizations against femicide and for reproductive rights have shaken society, Gago asks what the strike means when extended beyond the workplace to encompass all the unpaid labor that sustains life. The feminist strike makes visible the work of social reproduction, the cooking, cleaning, caring, and emotional labor that capitalism depends upon but refuses to recognize. Gago draws on autonomist Marxism, particularly the work on social reproduction by Silvia Federici, while remaining grounded in the specific context of Latin American struggles. She examines how feminist movements intersect with resistance to financial extractivism, the debt that disciplines poor women and indigenous communities. The book explores the relationship between gender violence and economic violence, arguing that both stem from patriarchal and capitalist structures that treat certain bodies as disposable. Gago also addresses tensions within feminism around questions of race, class, and sexuality, insisting that a truly liberatory movement must center those most marginalized. Translated by Liz Mason-Deese, this work offers readers in the Global North a window into one of the most vibrant feminist movements in the world and a theoretical framework for understanding strikes as more than labor actions.

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