Rachel O'Dwyer (National College of Art and Design, Dublin)

Disaster Girls. How do young women manage their finances and reconfigure hope in a rapidly changing economy?

Many of the stories we tell ourselves in order to make sense of the world, that hard work will eventually be rewarded, or that going to college will lead to a stable job, or that this job will help us to buy a house—now sound false. These narratives began to unravel first in the financial crisis, and once again during the pandemic. One expression of this was the boom in retail trading and cryptocurrency speculation in 2021 and 2022, when ordinary people—mostly men—bet their savings, hoping to get rich and gain financial stability. But what is a feminine response to the same crumbling pathways to security? How are women, traditionally the custodians of the good life, and the goods that go with it, facing down uncertainty? How do they respond? With Self-care? Manifestation? In the rise of the "trad-wife" or stay-at-home girlfriend lifestyles we see plastered over Instagram and TikTok? What informal economies have emerged as we’ve moved away from the idea of “having it all” or “leaning in?” What kinds of futures emerge from this new landscape, and how is the hope they offer shaped and unevenly distributed?