Power logics of consumers’ gendered (in)justices: reading reproductive health interventions through the transformative gender justice framework

ABSTRACT

Global gender asymmetries in marketing and consumer behavior were recently exemplified by the Transformative Gender Justice Framework (TGJF). The TGJF, however, lacks an explicit reference to power – an aspect that becomes apparent when it is used to assess a consumer phenomenology. In this article we augment the TGJF by building out the power logics and by empirically testing it through an assessment of the reproductive market in Uganda. We capture macro-, meso-, and micro-level power asymmetries, and explore how bio-power and control over resources melds with local gender relations and agentic practices that (i) leave social marketing efforts misaligned with embodied realities, and (ii) result in dichotomies and tensions in the reproductive health market as the North–South strive to define the modern-traditional, medical-pleasurable, and women-men nature of contraceptives.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender injustices
• social marketing
• power
• reproductive health
• Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laurel 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 Consumption, Markets & Culture, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, as well as in various edited books.

Catherine A. Coleman (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Associate Professor of Strategic Communication at Texas Christian University. Her research examines gender and consumption, vulnerability, transformative consumer research, consumer culture, and advertising and representation. Her work is published in top journals and leading books in her field. She is an executive committee member of TCU’s initiative for international education and global learning, which she connects through her research and teaching.

Linda Tuncay Zayer (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago. Her research interests include gender and identity, particularly from a transformative consumer research perspective. She has published in numerous top journals in her field and is the co-editor of the book, Gender, Culture and Consumer Behavior (Routledge).

Nacima Ourahmoune (Doctor IAE d’Aix and ESSEC BS) is Associate Professor of Marketing and Consumer Culture at KEDGE BS. As a former chair of ‘Marketing, Consumption and Society’ research lab, Nacima’s work interrogates how power issues irrigate the marketplace in various socio-cultural contexts shaping notions of body, sexuality, gender, social class or ethnicity. She published in leading journals in her field and serves in the board of various organizations to foster transformative approaches.

Wendy Hein (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is Lecturer in Marketing at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research focuses on gender in marketing and consumer research, specifically critical approaches and methodologies in the study of gender equality, feminisms, and men and masculinities. She has presented her work at various international conferences, published in book chapters, and journals including Qualitative Marketing Research: An International Journal, the Journal of Marketing Management, the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by the DFID-ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) under Grant (ref: ES/I034145/1).