Besides the rewarding encounters and insights that my efforts to trace the 5by20 program in Mexico and South Africa led me to, the most gratifying outcome of this study has been becoming a part of new feminist research communities. The network meeting and workshop Gender Incorporated at Roskilde University was especially important in this regard—thanks to everyone for such a vibrant two...

The lyrics of the Coca-Cola Company’s catchy commercial tunes from the 1970s and the 1990s convey messages of happiness, boundless togetherness, uniqueness, and comforting consistency; the soft drink that brings people closer to each other, a part of life as natural as stars and birds. Positively charged words like “harmony” and “enjoyment” lend themselves well to the...

The question was posed by a member of the audience at the Coca-Cola Company’s annual shareowners meeting in Atlanta in 2014. Its half-overt skepticism about the economic feasibility of sustainability programs resonates with Milton Friedman’s (1970)...

The growing involvement of corporations in gender and development politics, along with their far-reaching claims to serve the interests of marginalized women in the Global South, points to the need for feminist interrogations of the rationalities and effects of corporate-led women’s empowerment initiatives. To examine competing meanings and contradictory results, beyond neat statistics and...

It is nine o’clock in the morning when the World of Coca-Cola, the beverage company’s exhibition and entertainment complex in Atlanta, opens. Outside the entrance, a queue has already started to form. When the doors swing open, school classes and families on their holidays fill the lobby. Everyone is offered a Coca-Cola drink as the fervent buzz is interrupted by an employee...

At the Coca-Cola Company’s annual meeting for shareowners in Atlanta in 2014, where CEO Muhtar Kent explained to the audience that the company’s promotion of women’s empowerment is a key business strategy, not a “bogus philanthropic exercise,” 5by20 was also highlighted in a speech delivered onstage by a South African microbusiness owner. Corresponding to the standard...

Early one morning at a bus stop in South Africa, I met up with a former 5by20 participant who had offered to accompany me to a nearby township I had not been to before. I suspected that she thought it might be unsafe for me to go there alone, but she assured me that she was interested in exchanging experiences with other women who had been part of the program. During the bus ride she...

In this book, I have examined underlying rationalities, concrete manifestations, and diverse effects of a corporate-led women’s empowerment program: the Coca-Cola Company’s flagship venture 5by20 as I encountered it in Mexico and South Africa through my ethnographic research. But to engage critically with an empowerment program initiated by Coca-Cola—an icon of corporate power...

Adelante Movement,B02n5 , 4n2 ,

Series Editors: Nicki Smith, Adrienne Roberts, and Juanita Elias