‘Allow her to flourish and grow’: commodifying gendered handicraft labour in conscious capitalist brand imagery on Instagram

Abstract

Much of development policy centred around women over the last 50 years has increasingly emphasised women’s engagement in the formal labour force. In more recent years, the emergence of Western ‘conscious capitalist’ and ‘fair trade’ brands have sought to bridge this gap by employing women from the Global South in their supply chains. Although this has provided increased opportunities for women, especially those from poor communities, through the process of defetishising their labour vis-à-vis the exposure of this labour through branded advertising and imagery, the images of these women effectively become commoditised themselves. Using a content analysis of 300 Instagram images from three conscious capitalist handicraft brands, this paper will explore how this imagery is shaped around stereotypical thematic constructions of ‘developing women’ from the Global South, and how conscious capitalist brands characterise the representations of producers in their advertising.