The gender of recession: when neoliberal management models and economic policies define women’s subject-position

Abstract

This paper is aimed to discuss how the non-inclusion of public policies addressing gender relations in Portugal, during the current financial crisis, can determine the severity of the impacts not only of economic contraction, but also of an entire social dynamics for women – and for those other said minority groups. In this sense, it also seeks to understand how this neoliberal economic structure, gendered and patriarchal in its essence, has affected women in a considerable way. Thus, in defining its decisive agents within the economic fabric, Portugal’s interventionist economy does not place women as subjects in the centre of social decisions and economic priorities.