Selling liberation: tobacco firms, gender washing and tainted markets’ legitimation (1920s-2010s)

This in-depth historical study explores the ways in which two tobacco manufacturers appropriated over a century the cultural resources produced by feminist movements in order to legitimate an increasingly ‘tainted’ market. Using archival, interview and online multimodal data spanning from the 1920s to the 2010s, we suggest that these corporations engaged in a specific type of social symbolic work, which we call gender washing. Based on this analysis, we offer a process model that encapsulates the conflicts surrounding gender-related meanings, labels and artefacts within the marketplace. We contribute to debates on market legitimation, as well as on the gender politics of market developments and social symbolic work.