ABSTRACT
This chapter raises a number of questions about how femocrats and class analysis may be brought together. It does so with two principal aims. The first is to pursue the rarely asked question: where do femocrats fit into the class structure? The second is to propose that, if the critical tradition of class analysis is to maintain vitality and relevance, it must move beyond its patriarchal origins to accommodate this most significant and historically unprecedented feature of late-twentieth-century occupational systems: the capacity of a significant minority of women to establish themselves as economically independent through their own labour market activity. If managers and professionals need to be accorded an independent class location because they cannot be satisfactorily subsumed under either the bourgeoisie or proletariat, and because, unlike the petit bourgeoisie, they are a healthy and even growing species, their introduction into class analysis is of especial interest in relation to femocrats.
