It’s Not All ‘Bout the Money: (Un)doing the Gendered Economy

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the past decade, gender equality has increasingly been motivated by economic gain, and has been described as a key to economic growth and “good for business”. This article draws on an ethnographic study of professional gender equality consultants in order to explore the effects of market feminism. The participants use entrepreneurship as a form of activism and try to make a difference regarding issues of gender by selling equality as a commercial service. By understanding markets as “performative”, the article characterizes the relationship between markets and feminism as one that is multi-facetted and plural, in order to explore the possibility to “take back the economy”. Many of the consultants who were interviewed for this study talked about making money on feminism as empowering and subversive, and as something that actually added value to gender issues. They claim that this is done by questioning what is valued in a society, and who should be paid and for what. The purpose of this article is to examine these gender consultants’ “ways of performing” the relationships that exist between markets, money, and feminism, and the feminist agencies that these performances afford them. In performing market feminism, these consultants create a disruption in established narratives within the economy, private enterprise, and economic growth. The article thus points to the importance of challenging these narratives in order to build more feminist economies.