Austerity Future(s)?

Abstract

This chapter pays particular attention to how women's future imaginaries are felt in the present. It explores how austerity affects these imaginaries and asks which types of futures have women begun to imagine in the context of austerity. Women's future imaginings are multiple and are affected particularly by class positioning. The chapter changes its focus to reveal the ways in which austerity affects women's access to different kinds of imagined and real futures. Making interventions into some of the more utopian and post-political futures' research and thinking, this chapter specifically reflects on the different ways in which austerity distributes social distress and anxiety. Ultimately, it presents a nuanced analysis of how women imagine but also plan their future.