Power logics of consumers’ gendered (in)justices: reading reproductive health interventions through the transformative gender justice framework

Abstract

Global gender asymmetries in marketing and consumer behavior were recently exemplified by the Transformative Gender Justice Framework (TGJF). The TGJF, however, lacks an explicit reference to power – an aspect that becomes apparent when it is used to assess a consumer phenomenology. In this article we augment the TGJF by building out the power logics and by empirically testing it through an assessment of the reproductive market in Uganda. We capture macro-, meso-, and micro-level power asymmetries, and explore how bio-power and control over resources melds with local gender relations and agentic practices that (i) leave social marketing efforts misaligned with embodied realities, and (ii) result in dichotomies and tensions in the reproductive health market as the North–South strive to define the modern-traditional, medical-pleasurable, and women-men nature of contraceptives.