Brexit as a scandal: gender and global trumpism

‘Brexit’ was a watershed moment. It has made visible the major faultlines and fissures that underlie the so-called ‘United Kingdom’ (UK) and our increasingly globalized world. But the precise nature of those faultlines and fissures requires multiple strands of critical analysis and interpretation. To date, most analyses have highlighted the socio-economic class and immigration or rather race/empire reasons for the Brexit vote neglecting their gendered dimensions. Building on the framework developed in Scandalous Economics we show how gendered analysis both illuminates and complicates dominant explanations of the Brexit vote. We interrogate the agents of Brexit – highlighting the paradox of men's dominance of the Brexit campaign and women's rise in the political crisis that ensued after the referendum vote. We also examine the intersectional inequalities that have made Brexit conceivable from a gender perspective, and its likely impact given the austerity policies and global chains of migrant labour upon which the UK economy depends. We conclude that critical feminist political economy broadens as well as globalizes our analysis of international political economy. Moreover, this analysis of Brexit is a lens which can be used to interrogate the spread of populism aka ‘Trumpism’ elsewhere.