Marketing and Feminism

Current issues and research

Miriam Catterall, Pauline Maclaran, Lorna Stevens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136352843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

This cutting edge, innovative volume offers the best of current scholarship on feminist perspectives in marketing. Through many exciting and often controversial discussions, it highlights and challenges assumptions about women and gender in marketing theory and practice from both historical and current contexts. Key issues and debates include:

* the dark side of female consumption
* women and marketing in Socialist economies
* women and advertising
* ecofeminism and marketing
* gender, marketing and cultural diversity
* marketing, sex and sexuality.

Written by internationally recognised experts in marketing and feminism, this book makes a unique contribution to marketing scholarship.

1 Marketing and feminisms: an evolving relationship

Miriam Catterall, Pauline Maclaran and Lorna Stevens

INTRODUCTION

On the face of it marketing and feminism is a potentially explosive combination. After all, marketing promotes a system that has traditionally been castigated by feminists for exploiting women. However, all of the chapters in this book demonstrate that marketing and feminism have much to offer one another, specifically by showing us the very positive contribution feminism can make to marketing theory and practice. Feminism is a word that carries many emotive associations, not all of them positive. There can be few words that have been so controversial, so derided and so frequently maligned. Indeed, in common parlance it is often referred to as the ‘f’ word.

We cannot deny that the relationship between marketing and feminism is a complex one and it is that complexity that we seek to address and explore in this book. Does feminism have any relevance to marketing? Does feminism have any relevance at all in the twenty-first century? Surely gender is no longer an issue in these postmodernist times that consider identity as multiple, fractured and almost infinitely malleable? Perhaps it would be more sensible to recognise that the battles for women’s social and economic equality, characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s, have been won? Our main argument in this book is that feminism is as relevant and important at the dawn of the twenty-first century as it was at the dawn of the last century. We believe that talk of battles won and the irrelevance of gender is premature (Wilson 1999), and that so long as this remains the case feminist analyses of marketing theory, research and practice are as important now as they ever were.

One of the avowed aims of feminist academics is to bring the study of women and topics of interest and importance to women into the academic foreground. Since the consumer is usually assumed to be female we should not be surprised that feminist academics study consumers and consumption (Campbell 1995). Nor is this a recent phenomenon. Feminists have engaged in analyses of modem marketing almost from its inception. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, first published in 1963, maintained that marketers and advertisers were complicit in confining women to the home as housewives. This influential book set the tone for many of the feminist analyses of marketing and advertising that followed, from women academics based in such disciplines as sociology, cultural and media studies. Specifically, marketing and advertising have been conceptualised as forms of cultural doping that trivialise women or exploit their vulnerabilities. As might be expected, few of these ideas penetrated the mainstream marketing literature.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that feminist perspectives on marketing are solely or mainly about women consumers. Feminist research is often described as being on, by and for women, and this focus is important at a time when women are increasingly filling marketing classrooms and marketing jobs. The feminisation of marketing continues apace, and more women are moving into positions that were once male bastions. Feminist theories provide frameworks to help us understand how women have been integrated into the marketing profession. and whether and how the profession changes as a consequence.

We should not be embarrassed or defensive about this partisan focus on women and women’s issues, or about placing these explicitly on the wider marketing agenda. Too often in the past marketing researchers produced overgeneralised, essentialised and trivialised accounts of women as consumers. In a similar vein, there is a paucity of studies on women in the marketing professions. Indeed, it is often assumed that the marketing manager is male whereas the consumer is female.

Feminist academics may focus on women, but this Does not mean that men are excluded, or that feminist perspectives are irrelevant for men. Indeed many men consider themselves feminists (Digby 1998) and many others are empathetic to the aims of feminism. Clearly it is difficult, if not impossible, to study women without also studying men and gender relationships. Furthermore, issues relating to the feminising of the marketing profession and the consequent implications, in terms both of practice and of professional status, are of equal import to the men who work in marketing.

Whilst feminists have examined and commented on marketing phenomena for many decades, it is only within the past decade that feminist analyses from within the marketing academy have emerged and developed. Our main aim is to bring together in a single volume the latest thinking and research on feminist perspectives in marketing from marketing academics. It also offers an opportunity to reflect on how the relationship between marketing and feminism has developed and how it might develop in the future.

We have talked about feminist perspectives and the relationship between marketing and feminism and at this point it might be appropriate to discuss in more detail what we mean by feminism and feminist perspectives. We recognise that many of our readers may be unfamiliar with feminist theories and why and how they provide such a compelling framework for the study of gender and women’s issues in marketing. For this reason we begin our chapter by reviewing some of the key features of feminist thought. We continue with an examination of the relationship between marketing and feminism in terms of the past, the present and the future. Finally we offer an overview of each of the chapters, with our thoughts on how these contribute to the developing relationship between marketing and feminism.

WHAT EXACTLY IS FEMINISM?

Bracketing feminism is difficult, as there is no single philosophy that can be labelled feminism. Indeed some scholars argue that ‘feminisms’ may be a more appropriate term since there are many feminist positions (Whelehan 1995). These include liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, postmodern feminism, post-feminism, l’écriture féminine, and so on. For example, liberal feminists have consistently argued for equality’ of opportunity’ for women, particularly in relation to the world of work. Other feminists argue that equality of opportunity is not enough to redress gender asymmetry, and that wider structural and cultural changes are needed that will impact on both genders. This argument is persuasive. The past two decades may have marked a transformation in the lives of many women, but not without some cost. Many women undertake what is termed the ‘double shift’: paid work outside the home in addition to ‘normal’ domestic duties in the home. Thus, in the absence of a transformation of wider social systems and values, true equality of opportunity remains a distant goal. The differences between these feminisms can seem substantial and irresolvable. This perception seriously underestimates both the areas of commonality amongst feminists and the capacity within feminism to encourage and embrace diversity.

Common aims

Whatever the differences, feminists agree that women have suffered social injustice because of their sex and thus seek to redress this gender imbalance. Feminism involves a combination of social criticism (of the sources and impact of gender asymmetry) and social action (to highlight and improve the position of women). Thus, politics is inherent in feminism:

Feminism is a politics. It is a politics directed at changing existing power relations between women and men in society. These power relations structure all areas of life, the family, education and welfare, the worlds of work and politics, culture and leisure. They determine who does what for whom, what we are and what we might become.

(Weedon 1997: 1)

Given its roots in socio-political critique and action, feminism has an uneasy relationship with theory and philosophy; indeed some radical feminists are anti-theory. The more feminists have engaged in social criticism, the more they have identified the inadequacies of mainstream philosophy and epistemology and developed new thought in these areas. Feminist research tends to go beyond the description, explanation or understanding of phenomena (Ozanne and Stern 1993). Just as feminism as a socio-political movement incorporates the twin aims of social criticism and social change, so too does feminist theory and research. As social critics, feminist researchers have exposed knowledge as gendered. As advocates of social change, they seek to redress the gender imbalance in knowledge by offering alternative theories and methods of creating knowledge. This involves a complete rethink of the very basis of disciplinary knowledge and, in particular, its ‘male’ perspective and gender-blindness.

The assertion that knowledge is gendered and gender-blind needs an explanation. Some readers may recall the early days of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s when there were arguments that women were basically no different from men:‘anything you can do I can do better’, or at least as well. Differences between males and females were often played down for fear that these would be used as arguments to stifle women’s progress. It is easy to appreciate why such arguments arose, since higher value Is given to that which is considered male and lower value to that which is considered female. The privileging of male over female is to be found across time and across cultures. Whilst there are many reasons offered as to why this should be the case, one that has considerable support is the way in which philosophers have dichotomised male and female.

Over the centuries philosophers have found dichotomous categories (Jay 1981) or dualisms (Plumwood 1993) useful in analysing and explaining the human condition. Plato used the categories reason/emotion and universal/particular; for Hegel and Rousseau public/private, male/female and reason/nature proved useful; Marx employed production/reproduction, mental/manual, freedom/necessity; and Descartes emphasised mind/body, human/nature and subject/object, to name but a few (Lloyd 1984; Plumwood 1993). The feminist argument is that these dichotomies operate in a way that privileges one of each pail so that, for example, reason, mind and male are deemed superior to emotion, body and female. Indeed they are conceptualised in such a way that the latter of each pair is defined only in relation to the former, by what the former is not, as befits its inferior status. Thus, reason is defined and emotion becomes seen as that which reason is not. The terms are also linked so that ‘superior’ terms form a kind of coherent group: mind, reason, public and male, in contrast to such ‘inferior’ terms as body, emotion, private and female, in this way female has come to be defined by what male is not (an incomplete man) and has become associated with other linked inferior terms: emotion, body, object, and so on. Indeed these dichotomies, created by culture and society, have often taken on a ‘natural’ or biological basis or justification. For example, women are often portrayed as being more emotional than men, as if emotionality was a sex-specific disposition. It remains the case that it is more socially acceptable for women than for men to express emotion, and thus it is a gender difference created in culture rather than a sex difference rooted in ‘nature’. This distinction between sex (the biology of a person) and gender (created in culture) is vital to the feminist project for it means that whilst gender differences may be pervasive in culture they are not immutable.

For many feminists the privileging of ‘male’ values is reflected in knowledge and knowledge production. Academic knowledge is no more perspecriveless than the culture in which it is produced. It has U’aditionally reflected a dominant ‘male’ worldview and it is this gendering of knowledge that academic feminists have exposed. Feminist thought and philosophy is particularly influential in the academic world, and disciplines across the academy have been subjected to feminist analyses, highlighting the gendered nature of discipline knowledge previously assumed to be pcrspcctivclcss and neutral.

Celebrating diversity

During the 1980s the diversity of feminist positions came to the fore. Women of colour, notably bell hooks, pointed out that talk of shared oppression and universal sisterhood reflected the experiences and perspectives of white, middle-class women. Gender is not a sole defining category or experience, since no woman is only a woman. Race, class and sexuality can intersect with gender in ways that problematise talk of oppression on the basis of gender alone. Indeed, the experiences of black women or working-class women may have little in common with those of white and middle-class women (sec Peñaloza, Chapter 3).

Similarly, it was argued that the notion of a universal feminism, largely an Anglo-American feminism, failed to take into account the experiences and perspectives of women in different countries and cultures. In these respects feminism, which had done so much to expose and redress the gender-blindness of academic knowledge and discourse, was forced to recognise its own ‘blindness’ (Crowley 1999), as new feminist positions and perspectives emerged to challenge such ‘traditional’ positions as liberal, radical or socialist feminism. This presented a very real challenge to feminism as a unified project. Was it possible to incorporate all these differences into feminist theory or would the vision of what constituted feminist theory and the feminist project need a more radical rethink?

The situation was exacerbated by the growing popularity of postmodernist perspectives. These offered a radical critique of gender and the idea of a shared oppression based on gender, arguments that had always been central to the feminist project. Postmodernists argue that gender is one of those universalising and unhelpful binaries that typify modern Western thought. Many feminists agree with this position but are reluctant to dispense with this binary or to embrace postmodernism, and with good reason. Susan Bordo captured the difficulties for many feminists in accepting a postmodernist analysis of feminism and gender. Bordo (1990: 152) stated that ‘like it or not, in our present culture, our activities are coded as ‘‘male” or “female”. . . . One cannot be gender neutral in this culture’. Feminism is not simply about theory or radical intellectual critique; it is a political practice with the aim of improving the position of women, and it remains the case that women across the globe, whatever their class, race or sexuality, are in a less favourable position than their male counterparts.

Secondly, the search for commonalities amongst women in the face of difference and diversity was proving difficult to abandon. Indeed, it has been argued that feminism might focus on the commonalities of resistance (how women across the globe identify and define their problems and seek to address these) rather than assume a shared oppression amongst women:

. . . the need to continue moving on from nineteenth century visions of global sisterhood to an understanding of the range of local and global feminisms. Although the reality remains that women around the globe are worse off then their male counterparts, future possibilities for building global links are more likely to be found through looking for commonalities of resistance rather than assuming a sameness of oppression.

(Flew et al. 1999)

As this brief discussion illustrates there is now a plethora of feminist positions, yet the possibility of unity in diversity remains. In this respect feminism stands at the intersection between modernism and postmodernism with a foot in each camp (Crowley 1999). Additionally, in contrast to the univocality which is all too often symptomatic of many academic discourses, feminists celebrate multivocality. Diversity is regarded as a strength rather than a weakness. Furthermore, this goes some way to ensuring that feminist thought and feminist practice Does not remain static but is in constant change, in perpetual transformation. The nascent interdisciplinarity and capacity for perpetual transformation in feminism provide a framework that can help us understand phenomena and, simultaneously, embrace the changes taking place.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARKETING AND FEMINISM

This capacity for embracing change and perpetual transformation is useful when exa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Marketing and feminisms an evolving relationship
• 2 Market feminisms the case for a paradigm shift
• 3 Have we come a long way, baby? Negotiating a more multicultural feminism in the marketing academy in the USA
• 4 Advertisements as women’s texts: a feminist overview
• 5 Women and advertisings reading the relationship
• 6 Using memory-work to give a feminist voice to marketing research
• 7 Shifting the discourses feminist perspectives on consumer behaviour research
• 8 The laugh of the marketing Medusa? men are from Marx, women are from Veblen
• 9 The cultural contexts of advertising to women consumers? the examples of Malaysia and Romania
• 10 Reading Rabotnitsa : fifty years of creating gender identity in a socialist economy
• 11 Off to the shops? why do we really go shopping?
• 12 Women-focused consumption spaces? cafés/bars in Amsterdam
• 13 A postmodern analysis of the implications of the discourse of mass customisation for marginalised and prized consumers
• 14 Marketing and the divided self: healing the nature/woman separation
• 15 Gender and consumption in a cultural context
• Index