When rights abuses emerge in global supply chains — often most affecting female workers in the global south — there are often demands for tighter regulation of corporate behaviour. One way for corporations to respond and potentially deflect such demands is by creating voluntary codes of practice. Their very voluntariness is presented by corporations as evidence of a commitment to empowering workers — particularly women. Voluntary codes rarely lead to meaningful improvements.
In the aftermath, the voluntary Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety was established and promoted by western retailers such as Walmart as improving safety and empowering female factory workers. Yet crucially, there were no legally binding commitments to prevent another disaster, and the alliance was later criticised by activists and researchers for not improving conditions quickly enough.
Corporations can position themselves as global leaders on issues where they have previously been found wanting. Chiquita Banana , the famous logo of Chiquita Brands Corporation, might give shoppers in the global north the impression of buying their bananas from a happy, Latina market woman cheerfully selling her wares.
And all these stories raise the question: Is it possible to be a committed feminist and a committed capitalist at the same time? And why are we still so surprised when these women — who have built brands on saying the things we want to hear — turn out to be just as flawed as their male peers?
The disconnect between brand and reality can feel like a particularly painful betrayal for employees, many of whom are young and took their jobs because they were interested in working for a company whose ideals seemed to align with theirs. A Thinx employee told me that Agrawal regularly received missives from young women begging to work for her. Conditions in startups like this are ripe for impressionable young women, who often have little if any full-time job experience, to get taken advantage of.
It's hard not to assume that some founders prefer to hire a young, inexperienced workforce in part because they're cheap, but also because they're less likely to challenge the founder's authority. Sophia Amoruso, the founder of online retailer Nasty Gal, was once heralded as the next big thing in fashion.
Since then, she's reinvented herself as a kind of punk-rock Arianna Huffington for twentysomethings. But, according to former Nasty Gal employees, Amoruso never practiced the empowering, you-go-girl feminism that she preached. Around the same time, other employees described Amoruso as petty, vindictive, and surrounded by a team of "yes-women," all to the detriment of the rest of the company. I saw too many incredibly hard working, ambitious, and eager people lose so much self confidence, self worth and motivation, including myself.
As employers, Agrawal and Amoruso were able to capitalize on the coolness of their companies' brands. Thinx could attract employees who used its product, or even just saw and liked its subway ads.
Similarly, Nasty Gal cultivated an aura of coolness based largely on social media and marketing that was able to attract like-minded employees — people who believed in what its website's "about us" section used to call "fashion forward, free-thinking girls," but now is "all for gals who've got the confidence to just be themselves.
Both Amoruso and Agrawal have published books that outline their philosophies — Amoruso's Girlboss and Agrawal's Do Cool Shit , a manifesto promising to teach people how to "quit your day job, start your own business, and live a meaningful life" — that also serve as de facto recruiting advertisements. To Read the Full Story. Subscribe Sign In.
Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership. Resume Subscription We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. Please click confirm to resume now. Another woman who embodies the hypocrisy of white, mainstream feminism is Madeleine Albright.
Albright is celebrated as the first woman Secretary of State and a feminist icon. Albright was also the U. Security Council during the genocide in Rwanda in that tragically took about , lives. During the genocide, Albright refused to recognize the situation as a genocide, preventing U. The genocide of Rwanda was one of the bloodiest atrocities of the late 20th century. Rwandan women faced the brunt of much of this violence, with around , women experiencing rape and sexual violence.
The bloody genocide in Rwanda went on for days, and evidence shows that the U. However, U. This led to an innumerable loss of lives.
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