Tag: #inequality

White People and the Animals they Love

Book Review of Saving Endangered Species: Lessons in Wildlife Conservation from Indianapolis Prize Winners

By Lisa Ann Richey

◦ 6 min read ◦

This book review has first been published by Conservation and Society and can be also found at CBDS blog.

According to the press website, Saving Endangered Species has wide and diverse aims:  ‘to win new recruits, inspire biologists and conservationists already in the field, and illustrate the profession’s fundamental scientific tenets through wildlife champions’ own exciting narratives.’ Overall the purpose of the book is to present a moral imperative for a conservationist approach to saving nature and to do this through a collection of personal experiences from great conservationists about their love of nature and experiences from the day-to-day workings of conservation. Seven of the book’s contributors are winners of the Indianapolis Prize ‘the world’s leading award for animal conservation’ (p. 12) and one that prioritizes the inclusion of people as a ‘primary factor in the equation’ of conservation, and high levels of exposure in celebration of these ‘heroes and role models’ (p. 13).  

The book is stunning. It is an aesthetically beautiful edited volume from its entrancing animal photographs, skilled illustrations and colloquial snapshots of its famous contributors. And yet, for all its beauty, this book could have been titled, ‘White People and the Animals they Love.’

I start with my fundamental critique because for some readers, this will be all they need to hear to check this book off their ‘must read’ list. These readers, however, will be hard pressed to find other works of conservation biography that aren’t also easily critiqued for their class, racial, gender, and geographical elitism.

Also, a disclaimer, I am a social scientist who works in some of the policy spaces, ‘partnership’ imaginaries of business and helping, and geographical areas covered in this book. Thus, I am among the ‘to be inspired’ of the intended audience for this book. Additionally, the introduction, written by Dr. Robert W. Shumaker (evolutionary biologist, president and CEO of the Indianapolis Zoo) calls for ‘a more integrative approach in which the centrality of humans is recognized in the conservation agenda’ (p. 6). Thus, a review by a scholar of humans might be reasonably appropriate. 

In spite of the fact that the index does not include the term ‘celebrity,’ the book epitomizes what has come to be called ‘celebrity environmentalism’ (see Abidin, et. al 2020). The practice of scientists, film stars and social media influencers among others, who ‘enjoy public recognition, publicly support environmental causes, and benefits from their sustained public appearances’ as celebrity environmentalism may be a way of bringing new resources to conservation. 

The celebritized approach to conservation is clear from the Introduction’s start. While the reader might expect the star of this chapter to be the American Bison, named the official mammal of the United States in 2016, and depicted as a steadfast and grandiose being in the illustration that precedes the text, it is not. The star is the celebrity conservationist William T. Hornaday who initiated the first-ever zoo-based conservation effort as a result of his initial desire to provide a live bison model for better taxidermy (p.2). Thus, the scientific model for which the book collects a series of testimonies, is linked to the efforts of Hornaday. He was the director of the Bronx Zoo in 1906 when Ota Benga, a Mbuti man from Congo, was displayed in a cage in the monkey house. Hornaday wrote to the New York city mayor that ’When the history of the Zoological Park is written, this incident will form its most amusing passage.’  

Many people at that time, such as the Black clergyman Rev. James H. Gordon, were not amused. Many readers today will question the unambiguous celebration of these violent and dehumanizing roots of a movement intended to provide a moral approach to saving nature. 

Distinctions are signaled between the scientific authors and the celebrity environmentalists through engraving the masthead of every other page with a  ‘Dr.’ before the scientists, with other names presented title-less. Yet, these contributors are all performing the limited scripts of celebrity environmentalism: notably contributions enact specific tropes outlined by Abidin and her colleagues. We see contributions from the ‘Ambassador’ trope of high-profile performers who are patrons of NGOs and foundations, but whose personal commitment varies between superficial co-branding and long-term engagement. Quite prevalent is the ‘White Savior’ trope in which ‘wild places’ need to be saved from ‘locals’ through the actions of white people.  The book also highlights the ‘Activist Intellectual’ trope promoting cerebral and scientific reasons to support conservation, that then become celebritized through a focus on funding, media and elite networking. Finally, the book’s promotional writing enacts the trope of the environmental ‘Entrepreneur’ where conservation is meant to provide a good investment for business-minded people. 

The book opens with a long vignette from Harrison Ford at the 2018 Gala celebration referring to his co-contributors and others like them:  ‘You can call them researchers or scientists or conservationists. But let’s call them what they really are: These are heroes. Real heroes.’ (p. 17). However, as this book shows, the heroic narrative structure makes forging alliances and political solidarity across lines of class, race, cultures and politics quite challenging. Heroes stand above others, they are exceptional. And, as such, conservation through heroism is unsatisfactory, if not oxymoronic.

Conservation and the environmental politics that can sustain life on our planet call for less singularity, fewer stories of individuals excelling over other people and nature, and more connectedness, cooperation and coexistence. 

The introduction tells us that  ‘these are the voices of the greatest conservationists of our time’ (p. 17). I have no reason to doubt that these are their voices and that they are great conservationists, whatever criteria make up ‘greatness’. The stories are full of passion and genuine concern for conservation, so there is no doubt that these heroes are acting from noble intentions. However, the heroic hubris prevents the reflection over either why chickens when pushed off a roof don’t ‘progress well in flight’ (p. 21) or why ‘with no prior thought’ wildlife conservation should be best achieved through ‘a big cash award’ and an ‘exciting and glamourous event’ (p. 305).

With some notable exceptions, this book presents the same old stories of great men who just happen to have no reproductive obligations (with the predictable exception of the female scientist), so they can go singularly or with the support of a doting wife into long-term relationships with animals.

These men also have friends with lots of money and political clout, and the documentation of elite networking practices that comes through in the chapters actually works counter to a singular hero at the helm of conservation. Finally, these conservation heroes rely heavily on a competent staff of Black and Brown people who can put lofty ideals into practice, while not usurping the limelight from celebrity environmentalists. 

Some of the more ‘Activist Intellectual’ celebrity environmentalists present compelling arguments in lively texts around global warming and the contentious politics of saving the polar bears. Many of them take the reader through a combination of wildlife daily habits, international fundraising, and management of research and training projects. These are narrated as a partial life-history of a single ‘hero,’ and while there are nods to ‘local supporters,’ ‘scouts’ and collaborations between ‘enthusiastic’ local staff and international volunteers, this book tells a dangerous single story.

It’s time to remind ourselves and our peers that the heroic narrative of celebrity conservation may be useful for raising funds from businesses and for garnering the attention of bored bureaucrats, but it has dangerous political consequences.

A close reading of the text finds examples such as four ‘community game scouts,’ the ‘local African supporters’ in Kabara, and the ‘young Samburu warrior’ who was ‘walking in the bush’ with David Quammen, a writer from National Geographic (p.80). Samburu people have proper names, no less notable than people from Cincinnati, and the young man was not working as a warrior when assisting on a conservation project. These people are being rendered mundane through the repetitive text of the white savior narrative. They are being de-humanized as they remain in the background of the African or Asian ‘habitat’ for animals. The heroic narrative is based on an ongoing history of inequality between races, classes, genders and cultures.  

The afterword, written by the CEO of the Indianapolis Zoological Society (2002-2019) reads like advertising copy for ‘Western Civilization’ complete with God, Guns and Gold. It is a colonial vision of men like Paul Erlich in which the ‘dangers of unchecked human population’ are called out as problems while fossil fuel addiction, or all those flights to the Galas celebrating conservation heroes, are left unmentioned. The ‘Danger of a Single Story’ by Chimamanda Adichie taught an important lesson in 2009: ’The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.’ This is a beautiful book in its intentions and its aesthetics; the stories are often compelling and transport us into the lives of cranes and elephants and into some of the world’s most notable conservation initiatives. Yet, despite its intentions, the people are missing from this heroic script of celebrity environmentalism.    

Perhaps these people are left-out by design. Dr. George B. Schaller writes clearly:  ’My account here demonstrates that conservation is not part of development’ (p. 78). But, conservation is part of development. It is impossible to define conservation otherwise (Adams 2004). Both conservation and development are part of the holistic process of living sustainably on our planet. This book is intended to celebrate ’people as a primary factor in conservation.’ We do learn a lot about a particular sub-group of privileged people, their psychology and insecurities, their dreams and aspirations, about networks of elites across the globe who happen to have farms, foundations or PhD scholarships to spare. But we learn far less about the non-celebrity people in the lives of animals. Surely a global conservation movement that manifests the holistic visions and ’the connectedness of all living things’ (p. 119) that many of these contributions also embrace, needs less heroism and single stories and more solidarity, comradery and complexity. 

Further Reading

Abidin, C., Brockington, D., Goodman, M. K., Mostafanezhad, M. and Richey, L. A. (2020) “The tropes of celebrity environmentalism.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

Adichie, C. (2009) “The Danger of a Single Story” TED Talk.

Adams, W.M. (2004) Against Extinction. The Story of Conservation. Earthscan, London.

About the Author

Lisa Ann Richey is Professor of Globalization at the Copenhagen Business School. She works in the areas of international aid and humanitarian politics, the aid business and commodification of causes. She is the principal investigator on the Commodifying Compassion research project. https://www.lisaannrichey.com

Photo by Katie Treadway on Unsplash

The Concept of Fragmented Labour Markets

By Janine Leschke and Sonja Bekker

◦ 4 min read ◦

The employment and social impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic have been larger on some groups of workers than others. In particular, low-wage workers and workers in forms of employment that differ from full-time wage and salary work with a permanent contract seem to have been especially exposed to job and income losses (see ILO-OECD Covid-19 report). The concept of fragmented labour markets, which we propose here, highlights the large and growing diversity in employment relationships. It demonstrates the relevance of relating the impact of the crisis on jobs, income and social security to the degree of ‘resilience’ workers had prior to the crisis in terms of job stability and decent earnings. It is therefore very suitable for detecting vulnerabilities that have been built into labour markets over the past decades.

Rise of diverse types of non-standard employment relationships

The concept of fragmented labour markets focuses on the group of workers commonly termed ‘outsiders’ or the population in non-standard (also termed atypical) employment. It goes beyond traditional views on segmented, dual or primary versus secondary labour markets, which divide employment into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ jobs. There are a number of arguments as to why the use of binary divisions with regard to labour market status or outcomes are obsolete, such as the substantial variety within both the groups of standard and non-standard jobs.

Over the past decades, a further fragmentation of employment status has occurred. Some speak of an ‘explosion’ of diverse types of non-standard employment relationships, making these types of jobs an often occurring or even ‘normal’ phenomenon at least for some labour market groups, such as women. Consequently, within the group of ‘outsiders’, an ever greater variety of forms of employment is materialising, making the groups themselves far from homogeneous. 

Call for a new approach

The inadequate binary division of the labour market into groups of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ has spurred a call for a new multidimensional approach to understanding inequalities in work and employment. These suggestions go beyond merely defining non-standard work as all forms of work that deviate from the standard employment relationship.

Based on the trends and observations highlighted above, we develop the concept of fragmented labour markets as a way to both define and explore the most vulnerable types of non-standard employment. We build on the work of authors who point at key elements of such a definition, including the different labour market groups that have different sets of rights and labour conditions, and refer to different employment statuses such as part-time work, fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, self-employment, marginal employment, platform work and other ‘non-standard’ forms of employment.

Additionally, we look at the earnings that workers (can) generate with their jobs, and whether they combine several employment statuses (e.g. being part-time as well as fixed-term employed). Moreover, we zoom in on certain occupational groups. The latter focus is relevant in order to prevent certain vulnerable groups remaining ‘hidden’ in overall labour market averages (see, e.g., the example of the occupational groups of cleaners below).

Therefore, we define fragmented labour markets as:

Labour markets characterised by an accumulation of insecurities. Fragmentation is evident where workers combine non-standard employment with low wages or where they combine several forms of non-standard employment − situations that are dominant in particular occupational groups.

We argue that using the concept of labour market fragmentation may render visible which labour market groups are generally more insecure and vulnerable to job and/or income loss and fluctuations and would therefore need additional support particularly when crises occur.

Exploring selected occupational groups in Germany and the Netherlands

Using this concept exploratory with a focus on two affluent countries – Germany and the Netherlands – highlights vulnerability in some occupations, particularly among women, but at times also among men.

For instance, almost 70% of female personal care employees in Germany are part-time employed and 18% of those combine part-time employment with a fixed-term employment contract (see EU-LFS). In the Netherlands, 43% of women in the occupational group of cleaners and helpers & service employees are marginal employed (less than 15 working hours per week) and 27% of those combine marginal part-time employment with fixed-term employment. Both occupations, and particularly cleaning are at the same time characterised by low wages (see SES). These groups would have been ‘invisible’ if only data on the average economy had been used. 

Additionally, the use of the concept of labour market fragmentation shows that in some occupations and groups, there are hardly any standard jobs left.

For instance, among women in the Dutch personal care and cleaners and helpers occupations, nearly everyone has a part time job (>90%), while in Germany the vast majority of women with a cleaning and helpers occupation has a part time job (>85%). At the same time these jobs are commonly relatively poorly paid and it is not uncommon that these part-time jobs are combined with other flexible forms of employment to make ends meet.

This not only has consequences for employment and earnings security while being in a job but also has important knock-on consequences for accessibility to and adequacy of social security, which is affected to a large degree by the level of earnings and job tenure (with the exception of social minimum benefits).

The concept of fragmentation thereby transcends labour markets and its value becomes particularly evident in times of crisis. As a result of the pandemic, low-wage workers and workers in diverse forms of non-standard employment relationships have been especially exposed to job and income losses. Moreover, in times of economic downturns, new jobs will often be more likely to be non-standard contracts than in times of economic upturns.

Both in Germany and the Netherlands, social security coverage has been problematic for some of these groups during the coronavirus crisis.

Understanding the growing flexibility in labour markets

The concept of fragmentation thus assists in achieving a more profound understanding of what growing flexibility in labour markets really entails in terms of cumulative insecurities for some labour market groups. It helps fuel discussion on making social security more inclusive for workers, regardless of their labour market position. Last but not least, with respect to occupations where up to 90% of (female) workers are in non-standard employment, often combined with other forms of non-standard employment and/or low wages, it helps raise questions as to how much labour market fragmentation affluent societies can legitimise.

Further reading

Bekker, S. and Leschke, J. (2021), Fragmented labour markets in affluent societies: examples from Germany and the Netherlands, OSE Paper Series, Research Paper No.48, Brussels: European Social Observatory, 24p.

About the Authors

Janine Leschke, political scientist, is prof MSO in comparative labour market analysis. Her research interests comprise issues such atypical work, job quality, labour mobility and migration, youth unemployment, as well as gender. She is currently the Danish lead partner in the Horizon 2020 project HECAT, participant in EuSocialCit and one of the editors of Journal of European Social Policy.

Sonja Bekker is an associate professor European Social Policy at both Utrecht University and Tilburg University. Her research interests include European employment policies and social policies, particularly focused on vulnerable groups such as people with flexible employment relations, youth, people experiencing in-work poverty. She is part of the Horizon 2020 WorkYP project.

Photo by Danny Sunderman on Unsplash

March for Gender #2: The Gendered Impact of Covid-19

By Maha Rafi Atal

◦ 5 min read ◦

Most years, International Women’s Day is greeted by articles highlighting both progress made towards gender equality, and the distance still to close. 2021 is different. This year, organizations from the European Parliament to UN Women have instead drawn attention to how women have been pushed backwards – economically and politically – during the coronavirus. It has been “a disaster for feminism,”and a “great amplifier” which has exacerbated existing inequalities and unraveled tenuous gains. What does the research show?

First, the global economic contraction of the past year has disproportionately harmed women. In the United States alone, more than 2 million women have dropped out of the labor force altogether, a regression to 1988 participation levels, erasing a generation of gains. 

Globally, women account for 54% of jobs lost during the pandemic, even though they make up only 39% of the global formal workforce.

Women bore the brunt of job losses in 17 of the 24 member-states of the OECD in 2020, and in South Africa, a survey found that two-thirds of workers laid off or furloughed in the first wave of the pandemic were women.

In part, this is a reflection of the sectors women work in, such as travel, tourism, restaurants, and food production, which have been largely shut down over the past year.

Women are also more likely to be employed on precarious or zero-hours contracts within these sectors, which made them vulnerable to job cuts, or in informal roles which left them outside the reach of government income-support schemes.

Finally, 190 million women work in global supply chains, including garments and food processing, and these industries have contracted as buyers either withdrew orders from suppliers during the recession, or sought to re-shore production closer to home. Labor market dynamics also mean women who stayed in work are among the most exposed to contracting the virus itself. A majority – estimates range from 67 to 76 percent – of the global health care workforce are women.

Yet only one quarter of the gendered discrepancy in job losses can be explained by the sectors where women are employed. Far more significant is the burden of care labor, both paid and unpaid, which disproportionately falls on women in both developed and developing countries. 

Working mothers in the United Kingdom, for example, are 50% more likely than fathers to have either lost their jobs or quit in order to accommodate the responsibilities of caring for children with schools closed, with European women doing on average twice as much care labor as men during this period.

Over a million women in Japan left the job market in the first wave of the pandemic due to childcare needs at home, erasing tenuous progress the country had made towards workplace gender equality in the last decade. This unequal weight of the pandemic builds on pre-existing inequalities, as women are lower earners in many societies, meaning their jobs are considered a lower priority – by both employers and households – in times of crisis.

This economic crisis is not just a blow to women’s economic position, but to their political freedom. The “Local Diaries” podcast in India recounts the stories of women whose personal, political and sexual freedoms have evaporated as they have been locked down at home. As in pandemics past, covid-19 has seen a significant spike in domestic violence, femicide and other gender-bases violence in countries under lockdown. These include including developing countries like Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan, and China, and developed countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Sweden and Italy, a reminder that the home is not a safe place for many women. UN Women has referred to these spikes in violence as the “shadow pandemic.” 

Moreover, despite early warnings from international organizations and women’s rights advocates, many countries shut down or diverted resources away from reproductive health care during the pandemic, leading to a rise in maternal deaths, unsafe abortions and pregnancy-related deaths. Finally, lockdowns themselves – and the expansion of policing and military powers associated with their enforcement – can themselves pose a risk to women, as police forces can themselves be significant perpetrators of violence against women, and as governments take advantage of these powers to suppress political organizing, including feminist organizing, as seen recently in both the UK and Poland.

At the same time, in a punishing political environment, women and feminist organizations have been at the forefront of pandemic response. The Chilean feminist movement has released a useful guide for governments and employers for responding to the pandemic in a gender-just way, while the Indian Kudumbashree women’s collective organized grassroots community kitchens and takeaway restaurants to provide food and employment to women, especially migrant women, during the country’s shut down, and repurposed textile micro-enterprises, largely women-owned, for the manufacture of PPE.

Despite calls from international experts for governments to respond directly to the crisis facing women by keeping services for reproductive health or shelters for victims of gender-based violence open, targeting cash transfers to women in informal employment and providing for paid child care, UNDP reports that only 12% of governments have adopted adequate gender-sensitive measures in their pandemic response.

Meanwhile, employers who have disproportionately laid off women in the crisis now report that gender equity will take a backseat to restoring their financial sustainability as the pandemic ends. This is made more difficult by the fact that some governments, such as the UK, have suspended requirements for companies to report on their gender pay gap or comply with other equality requirements, as part of pandemic support.

In our own research on corporate responses to covid-19, we found brands advertising luxury fashion goods to women and presenting the pandemic lockdowns as a welcome relief from labor in which women could enjoy them, a regressive image that shows how women’s work is still seen as frivolous and extraneous.

This International Women’s Day, then, we must reflect not on what progress we have made or can make, but on how women, internationally, can recover what we have lost.

About the Author

Maha Rafi Atal is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Copenhagen Business School, where her research focuses on corporate power, corporate social responsibility and corporate influence in the media. She is a co- Investigator on the Commodifying Compassion research project. http://www.maha-rafi-atal.com

Photo by Giacomo Ferroni on Unsplash

March for Gender #1: How a feminist collective took on a media giant to challenge everyday sexism

By Sarah Glozer & Lauren McCarthy

◦ 4 min read ◦

To mark International Women’s Day 2021, the University of Bath’s Business and Society blog and Copenhagen Business School’s Business of Society blog have teamed up to present March for Gender. This month we will explore research focusing on gender, or research findings that have specific implications for women.

Here Sarah Glozer and Lauren McCarthy present their latest research into the activities of the feminist group ‘No More Page 3’. They explain why online activists should take a step back for campaigning in order to maintain the energy needed to affect change. This piece was originally published in The Conversation.

The daily image of a topless woman on page three of the Sun newspaper was considered by some to be a “British institution”. Yet it was also increasingly seen as a relic of institutionalised sexism in the media and society.

Then in 2015, nearly 50 years after it was first introduced, the feature was quietly removed from the publication. This decision was credited, in part, to the online campaign efforts of the “No More Page 3” (NMP3) movement, which gained the support of 140 members of parliament and numerous charities, including Women’s Aid and Girlguiding. It also attracted more than 240,000 petition signatures.

The campaign, which helped to force change at one of the UK’s most popular and powerful media companies, was widely acclaimed, described by one MP as a “seismic victory”. Activist Katherine Sladden wrote, “No other campaign has done as much to inspire a new generation of young feminists,” adding that it “became the gateway for women finding the courage to speak out on issues they care about”.

But beneath this success story lies a complex tale of how emotional energy sustained the NMP3 campaigners through personal and painful trolling.

Our research into the campaign reveals how supporters were met with online abuse on a daily basis. They regularly encountered rape and death threats aimed at themselves and their families. Campaign founder Lucy-Anne Holmes has told how she suffered an “overwhelming feeling of helplessness” and “burnout”, recalling:

It was terrifying. I was spent: financially, emotionally, creatively. Just going on Twitter with all of those voices coming at me would bring on a panic attack. I felt like I was being strangled by invisible hands.

Her experience was far from unique. For while the liberating potential of social media to mobilise collective action is widely valued, the toxic climate many experience on social media is all too familiar, and can lead to stress, anxiety and depression.

Yet the relentless online abuse aimed at the NMP3 campaigners – who deliberately tried to engage with their opponents through reasoned and polite posts – was tempered by messages of encouragement, both from each other and from supporters of their cause.

This complex interplay of positive and negative emotions led us to dig deeper into the campaigners’ survival story, and investigate the powerful techniques which kept them going in the face of such overwhelming adversity.

One important element was the underlying sense of solidarity which became a powerful force in helping the campaigners to recharge and replenish, sustaining momentum through emotional highs and lows. Faced with trolling and harassment, many campaigners felt energised simply by being online with other women with shared experiences. This feeling of alignment with others created a valuable store of emotional energy.

As one campaigner told us: “It wasn’t just a campaign … it was a space where we could go and feel completely confident, we could share anything with each other, and work out what we thought about things.”

Stepping back to move forward

Interestingly, this solidarity led to the coordinated and tactical use of a relay system adopted by the team. An exhausted campaigner wrestling with a hostile social media thread would “pass the baton” on to a colleague via a system of online messaging or “tagging” across platforms.

This system became a vital part of keeping the campaign’s momentum at times when some members felt the need to retreat from the front line. There was time and space for activists to step away from their screens, to disengage with the onslaught of social media.

Usually temporary, these moments of stepping away were deliberate and empowering – they offered protection. And in preserving individual wellbeing, they also ensured the continuation of the campaign.

Retreating, far from being seen as a form of weakness or defeat, was supported by the campaigners. It was a strategy which allowed for recovery of emotional energy and healing and, crucially, it rejuvenated the campaigners to return to campaigning.

A genuine connection to the roots of the campaign was also something that sustained the (mostly female) volunteers. They drew on their aligned personal experiences, often reminiscing about teenage shame they experienced related to their bodies or of later episodes of sexual harassment. The emotions related to these experiences meant the campaigners didn’t just “think” shame or anger, they felt it deeply.

One explained to us: “The feminist stuff still remains the thing that really lights me up.” She continued: “I feel it’s personal, it’s maternal, because I have a daughter, and a son who’s affected by toxic masculinity. It’s in my experience of abuse in relationship. I’m angry about it and passionate about it because it’s personal to me and people that I love.”

Another said: “Standing up for what is right is enough to make your legs go weak, your voice grow hoarse, and your hands shake with rage.”

Six years on from the NMP3 victory, more action is needed to fight inequality in both our online and offline worlds – there is still plenty to campaign for. Digital platforms certainly need to better police social media channels which continue to tolerate and excuse trolling and hate speech, particularly that directed towards women.

But we should be encouraged by NMP3’s story of grassroots collective strength, and its journey to success. And we should also consider the lessons it provides about activism and the common advice for women to always “lean in”. Sometimes, it seems, it’s better to simply retreat, replenish and come back stronger.

About the Authors

Dr Sarah Glozer is Associate Professor in Marketing and Society in the School of Management at the University of Bath. She obtained her PhD from the International Centre of Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR) at Nottingham University Business School. Sarah has also held a number of industry positions, such as Global Sustainability Manager at Cadbury Plc, UK. She is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Business, Organisations and Society (CBOS). Sarah researches and teaches on topics including corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication, digital marketing and ethical markets / consumption.

Dr Lauren McCarthy is Co-Director of the Centre for Research into Sustainability (CRIS) and a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies and Sustainability at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research explores in what ways business can contribute to gender equality, with a focus on global supply chains. Lauren’s research has covered cocoa production in Ghana, cotton farming in India, and most recently, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women garment workers in Cambodia. Equally, her research has explored how feminist social movements interact with business and CSR, particularly through the use of social media.

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash