Gender Justice and the Market: A Transformative Consumer Research Perspective

Abstract

Despite growing awareness of the importance of gender equality in the advancement of global economies, the involvement of marketing and policy in (re)producing and resolving gender injustices remains understudied. This article proposes a transformative consumer research approach to studying gender-related issues. It develops the “transformative gender justice framework” (TGJF), which identifies perspectives from three enfranchisement theories: social and distributive justice, capabilities approach, and recognition theory. By applying a multiparadigmatic analysis, the authors encourage a dialogic and recursive approach so that scholars and policy makers can assess the interactions between structural, agentic, and sociocultural forces that underlie gender injustices. They argue the TGJF is necessary for full comprehension of the complex, systemic, glocalized, institutionalized, and embodied nature of gender injustices, as well as how policy, markets and marketing can both perpetuate and resolve gender injustices. To demonstrate the TGJF's analytical power, the authors apply the framework to one site of gender injustice (i.e., the sex tourism industry), propose applications across additional sites, and discuss questions it raises for future research.

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

“…The TGJF, proposed by Hein et al, (2016), offers a model to systematically explore structural and agentic elements of gender injustices in consumer markets, yet lacks an explicit connection to power. We develop this perspective, considering below how power relates to the TGJF's three lenses (social and distributive justice, recognition theory, and capabilities approach) before using it to analyze Uganda's contraceptive market.…”

“…Although originally oriented more towards policy implications, the TGJF could be applied to understand the various forces that surround consumers and their lived realities. What remains undeveloped in Hein et al's (2016) rendering of the TGJF, however, is a clear explication of what lies behind these forces: the power dynamics. When empirically viewed from consumers who are experiencing, accepting, or resisting injustices or the policies and market-meditations aimed at "empowering" them-this becomes readily apparent.…”

“…The first contribution of this paper is to add necessary theoretical depth to the TGJF by making power-both the oppressive and empowering aspects-explicit. To do so, in our literature review we combine the theories of power related to the three perspectives of justice proposed by Hein et al (2016): social and distributive justice, recognition theory, and capabilities approach. We propose that this framework can reinvigorate the structure versus agency debate by offering a systematic method to investigate both in a dialogical manner rather than being mutually exclusive.…”

Hero shots: involved fathers conquering new discursive territory in consumer culture

“…A related, but more socio-culturally informed area, is transformative consumer research that often studies how public policy initiatives can overcome problems inherent to our current consumer society. However, there is little emphasis on gender equality and family dynamics (Hein et al 2016). The focus is the state as a legislator setting up absolute limits or giving incentives, while its ideologyproducing function largely has been neglected.…”

Gendering consumer ethics

“…Nonetheless, Fraser has since responded to Butler's criticisms—mainly through a historically situated account of how the politics of recognition have been decoupled from the politics of redistribution in late capitalist societies (see Fraser, )—and her “perspectival dualism” still informs current debates on the politics of gender as well as other modes of collectivity such as race and religion (e.g., Lovell, ). Fraser's distinction has also been applied in marketing and consumer research albeit primarily at a public policy as opposed to individual consumption level (Hein et al, ; but see Steinfield, Coleman, Tuncay‐Zayer, Ourahmoune, & Hein, for an exception).…”