FEMINISM INDUSTRY: AN INQUIRY INTO THE CORPORATE APPROPRIATION OF WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Year 2018, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 67 - 79, 01.01.2018

Ege Öztokat

Abstract

A growing number of corporations started to develop product lines, advertising campaigns and new media engagement plans using messages and imagery around feminism and women’s movement in the recent years. As part of this new trend, a large number of global corporations adopted a seemingly feminist perspective by capitalizing on women’s empowerment, the body positive movement, intersectionality and other similar concepts from the feminist discourse of our day. Even though these high budget projects manage to appeal to larger sections of the world population than organically founded groups within women’s movement, the article argues that the corporate appropriation of feminism leads to decontextualization of women’s issues. The article aims to analyze the industrialization of feminism and the dynamics behind the creation of this emerging industry. The article consults in semiotic analysis of a recent ad campaign to serve as an example to offer a perspective on the subject. Concordantly, the textual and visual material of the commercial film launched by Nike Turkey on February 20, 2017 are analyzed. The findings of the article offer an observation of the appropriation of feminist discourse and the transformation of feminist values into profit values

Keywords

Appropriation, Feminism, Patriarchy, Advertising, Capitalism

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