This paper examines the effect of state feminism on the state of women and the women’s movement in Jordan. State feminist agencies are propagandized internationally as a strategy to bring women’s and gender issues into politics. However, in countries where governments lack true and actual representation of people, and where national policies are dictated by international financial organisations (such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, through structural adjustment programs), state feminism is at odds with independent, leftists, and grassroots women’s organisations. Emerging as a tool in the hands of male dominated, undemocratically elected, economically and politically dependent governments, and through their exclusive focus on liberal feminist agendas, Jordan’s state feminism led by female royalties ignores the direct effects of neoliberal policies of structural adjustment programs depriving women of historically guaranteed (by the Jordanian state) protections, including subsidized food, fuel, education, health care and secured jobs.
