ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews how past scholarship has advanced the study of the self, and highlights the importance of gender discourses to conceptualizations of self. It discusses three broad areas of research by contemporary scholars as they relate to gender and self: feminisms, masculinities, and intersectional perspectives. The chapter proposes research opportunities for advancing scholarship on gender and self towards transformational consumer research perspectives. Consumer research focused on gender and the self has drawn from diverse disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and cultural and feminist studies, among others. Feminist perspectives have equally played an important role in the study of men and masculinities across the social sciences, and came to play a significant role in consumer research since 2000. Scholars have likewise continued to build a critical perspective of intersectionalities by expanding beyond the dominant Western-based geographies to explore gender within other contexts where other oppressive forces and cultural norms shape consumer behavior.
