The Making of Mamatoto Virago the Body Shop and Feminist Business Strategy.pdf (1015.8 kB)
The making of Mamatoto: Virago, The Body Shop and feminist business strategy
Version 2 2023-06-12, 09:58
Version 1 2023-06-10, 00:42
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-12, 09:58 authored by Margaretta JollyMargaretta JollyThis article explores a collaboration between Virago Press and the Body Shop (TBS) to shine a light on feminist and women’s business, what they have shared historically and how they could work together in late twentieth-century Britain. It uses as a lens the 1991 sale of a Body Shop book, Mamatoto: A Celebration of Birth, to Virago Press. The processes and outcome raise thorny questions: how can political commitments lead to business innovation? How can business support political aims? What kinds of deals can be done between divergent ‘activist’ businesses, and what kind of identification between feminist entrepreneurs supports such deals? Mamatoto, sold alongside a range of mother and baby toiletries of the same name, was important to Virago commercially at a time of economic precarity and expressed TBS’s growing interest in combining marketing with social justice campaigns. Yet the book’s representation of women in developing countries points to neo-colonial elements in the white, middle-class ‘mama market’ of the 1990s, a market which TBS especially cultivated but which contradicted the principles of the women’s movements Virago aimed to serve. The Mamatoto deal thus arguably involved political compromise, even if it was good business. Yet, the partnership also reflects the strategy and strengths of both Virago (established 1974) and TBS (1976) as enduring and iconic women-centred businesses. TBS simultaneously pioneered fair-trade initiatives and a ground-breaking practice of ‘social’ audit, while Virago was developing more inclusive, multi-cultural and transnational approaches to its work, including in a contemporaneous production of a cookbook with the development charity Oxfam. Understanding their struggles to align value chains and combine purpose and profit remains positive and instructive for would-be feminist entrepreneurs today.
Funding
The business of women's words: Purpose and profit in feminist publishing; G2179; LEVERHULME TRUST; RPG-2017-218
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Women: a cultural reviewISSN
0957-4042Publisher
Taylor & FrancisExternal DOI
Issue
3-4Volume
32Page range
318-340Department affiliated with
- Media and Film Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2021-08-23First Open Access (FOA) Date
2022-01-10First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2021-08-20Usage metrics
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