Corporations, gender equality and women’s empowerment: feminismco-opted?

The aim of this chapter is to document and critically analyze some of the debates around the supposed commensurability between gender equality and corporate rule. The authors survey a range initiatives and claims that emphasize the need to integrate women into the labour force, into corporate supply chains, and/or into top management roles of a growing number of corporations. These initiatives are underpinned by the ‘business case’ for gender equality, which, as feminists have argued, is deeply problematic in many of its assumptions. The authors map out some findings of ethnographic research on corporate-led empowerment initiatives aimed at women in the Global South, suggesting that these largely substantiate many of the concerns voiced by critical feminists. However, they further note that as these projects garner resistance from those social forces that they seek to silence and/or co-opt, they become central sites of feminist activism.