Corporate social responsibility and the neoliberalization of feminism

The chapter examines corporate social responsibility projects that focus on women’s empowerment as embedded in a historical moment characterized by a neoliberalization of feminism. It interrogates three axes of neoliberalization: (a) the inclusion of women into the paid labour force in the name of women’s empowerment; (b) an ideological co-optation based on making feminism fit neoliberal doctrine, and the reformulation of gender equality as good for business and growth; and (c) the incorporation of gender equality into neoliberal rationalities and technologies of government, such as public–private partnerships and the production of new gendered subjectivities that flourish in liberal markets.