1, 2, 3, 4. I declare…empowerment? A material-discursive analysis of the marketisation, measurement and marketing of women’s economic empowerment

ABSTRACT

Adopting Karen Barad’s material-discursive feminism, this paper investigates how human/non-human elements intra-act and blur together across time and space to produce the phenomena and paradoxes of Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE). Based on historical analyses of WEE and work with Walmart and other corporations involved in WEE, the author reveals how corporate-based WEE interventions unfold from historically-based and on-going entanglements of actors, discursive practices, an array of tangible and intangible elements (e.g. documents, systems, feedback loops) and marketing devices (e.g. commitments, metrics, stories, human transparency, myths). This paper expands views on agency and discourse, and advances understandings of WEE/CSR by making these complex intra-activities visible. It considers the role discursive practices and actors – including the author – play in these intra-activities and the effects of resultant (in)visibilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Women’s economic empowerment
• material-discursive feminism
• market feminism
• corporate social responsibility
• metrics
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Although the research was funded by Walmart Inc., the researchers retained IP rights over the research findings and non-confidential information.

Notes

1. This intra-activity is not a story of consistent positive trajectories. Rather it is a story of complex entanglements of humans and non-humans, contentious debates and changes in discursive practices. Detailing this complex intra-activity, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. Readers interested in this history should consult references provided.

2. While a deeper investigation of these historical entanglements are beyond the scope of this paper, readers can refer to Scott (2006) for a historical recount related to anti-corporate feminism in the US; Scott et al. (2012) for how anti-corporatism relates to different types of feminism; or Sen and Grown (1987) for evidence I found of WEE/women advocates.

3. This latter commitment was originally broken down into achievements related to training 60,000 female factory workers, 500,000 women farm workers, 200,000 women in retail, and 200,000 women from ‘low-income households’ in the U.S. (Wal-Mart, 2012, p. 6).

4. Number 1 was waste reduction; number 2 was sourcing from local farmers.

5. This website, www.walmart.com/empoweringwomentogether, which no longer operates, speaks to the transient nature of some of the non-human elements. The story behind why the website is no longer used is beyond the scope of my knowledge of the project.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Valente Center, Bentley University [Valente Humanities Research Seminar]; and Walmart Inc.

Notes on contributors

Laurel A. Steinfield

Laurel A. Steinfield (DPhil, University of Oxford) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bentley University. Her research focuses on social stratifications, including gender, racial, and global North-South hierarchies. As a sociologist, transformative consumer researcher and marketing professor, she studies how social stratifications interact with marketplace dynamics and how resulting injustices may be transformed. She has published in numerous journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, the Journal of Business Research, Consumption, Markets & Culture, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, as well as in various edited books. She is on the advisory board of GENMAC (Gender and Marketing) and Transformative Consumer Research, and works with organizations in the public and private sector in their empowerment endeavors.