Why corporate power is a feminist issue

By Sanyu Awori

We are living in an era of consolidated corporate power.

Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes, CEO pay has risen and oil, gas and pharmaceutical companies have reported windfall profits during a climate crisis and global pandemic.

The world’s fifty largest listed corporations are valued at US$13.3 trillion: if you can’t fathom what that means, just know that it translates into more wealth than the combined budgets of most countries. Many of the richest entities are corporations not governments.

Corporate power is undoubtedly a feminist issue.

The wealth of corporations is built on the backs of women’s labour. Let’s look at the fashion supply chain. Eight out of 10 workers on the factory floor are women working long hours and making very low wages.

From Bangladesh to Lesotho, women are working in garment factories under the threat of gender-based violence, in precarious environments where unionizing and collective organising are actively suppressed.

The power imbalances in the fashion supply chain are so stark and so skewed against women workers. At the height of the pandemic, for example, fashion brands cancelled their orders and this led to the “organised abandonment of garment workers” in their supply chain and triggered a mass humanitarian crisis.

The repercussions persist to this day with some brands refusing to pay workers the wages owed to them, as Nike has done in Cambodia and Thailand.

That very same year, Nike was making its highest profits on record and paying its shareholders large dividends. As the corporation’s sponsorship of the Paris Olympics has given it increased visibility, workers continue to campaign for the return of stolen wages.

It is not a coincidence that women and marginalised people are overrepresented at the bottom of different global supply chains from fashion and flowers to fruit and tea. It is a result of the primacy of profit-making, mixing with patriarchy and structural discrimination that produces gendered and racialised inequalities.

Corporate power is never neutral

Corporate power has multiple impacts on the lives of women, non-binary, gender expansive people and their communities. Even when you look at the environment, that power has consequences for gender justice.

From Guatemala to South Africa to the Philippines, the mining industry for example is a source of conflict which disenfranchises women and their communities on multiple levels. Trying to hold them accountable is dangerous business.

Women, queer and indigenous human rights defenders confronting extractive industries face heightened risks and violence. Just look at the murders of Berta Caceres in Honduras and Fikile Ntshangase in South Africa and the attacks against environmental defenders.

This is why feminists want systems change. We push back against neoliberal feminism that gives us #GirlBossFeminism and #LeanInFeminism because representation at the C-suite level of corporations does not translate into gender justice.

Feminists seek structural change beyond the cosmetic campaigns around Women’s Month and Pride Month that tokenize women and queer communities for profit; and beyond the trendy “ESG investing” that co-opts feminist language to secure a wider profit margin without actually practicing feminism.

This is not about integrating women into rotten systems that benefit a small elite group over the majority. It is about dismantling the economic systems that make it possible for billionaires’ wealth to grow while the people working for them struggle to live debt-free.

Building feminist economies requires us to shrink corporate power

Shrinking corporate power requires us to abolish the ability for corporations to sue governments under investor-state dispute mechanisms as stipulated in trade and investment treaties. Investor-state dispute settlement clauses cement the asymmetries of power between corporations and governments, and make it even more difficult to assert the primacy of human rights.

Corporations use these mechanisms to assert their interests and this has a disastrous impact on human rights and gender justice. For example, an Italian company sued the South African government when it initiated its Black economic empowerment program to address racial economic disparities caused by apartheid.  

The threat of legal action is enough to frighten most governments. Cases involve hefty payments which are extra-challenging for governments with very little fiscal room.

At a time when corporate capture over policymaking and development is at its peak and threatens the realisation of our human rights, we need to use a myriad of ways to take the power back from corporations.

African feminism reminds us that “to challenge patriarchy effectively also requires challenging other systems of oppression and exploitation, which frequently mutually support each other.”

From tax justice and wealth redistribution, to ensuring that we have clear, binding rules to hold corporations accountable for their actions and even inactions.

The climate crisis shows us that we can’t leave it to corporations to regulate themselves. They will lobby for their interests, feed us false solutions and do what it takes to secure profit margins. It is time to dismantle corporate power and build the feminist systems we deserve.

Sanyu Awori is a Pan-African feminist working globally to advance visions, policies and practices on economic justice.