Expanding markets and marketing gender: the integration of the postsocialist Czech Republic

Abstract

Despite the unprecedented nature of the transitions in Eastern Europe since 1989, scholars of international political economy have done little to analyse the processes of globalization and social transformation that they represent. Post-socialist countries provide rich sites for advancing our knowledge of the global market process and its social and political impacts. This article focuses on the gender aspects of globalization. It argues that the marketing of gender distinctions in globalized culture industries and consumer advertising has had indelible effects on capitalist market expansion in Eastern Europe. Reinscribing gender identities and desires is a sound multinational corporate strategy for maximizing profits and increasing consumption in this region. But the interplay between the local and the global is not straightforward. A case study of the Czech Republic, in particular of Czech Harlequin and Cosmopolitan magazine, shows how this global marketing is contested in the post-socialist context. In the aftermath of communism, new norms of gender relations, ostensibly exports from the west, enable the extension of markets and commodification, while also empowering women as individuals and consumers.