Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work

Abstract

This essay draws on 1970s feminist critiques of the ideologies of love and romance to develop a critique of the popular advice literature that directs employees to find love and happiness at work. The author argues that, under heteropatriarchal capitalism, the ideology of romantic love is being harnessed not only to continue to assign domestic work to women, but to recruit all waged workers into a more intimate relationship with work.