Philanthrocapitalism and the languaging of empowered women in the Global South

Abstract This article explores the impact of market-driven corporate philanthropy on educational institutions and their social actors, with a focus on how ideas of English and women’s empowerment become institutionally entrenched with subject-making processes in the context of higher education in Bangladesh. While questions about how late capitalism as a global phenomenon shapes language education policy and practice have been raised and discussed widely within the applied linguistics and sociolinguistic literature, we argue that there has been less academic attention to how these logics penetrate institutions of higher education through partnerships between private universities, local governments, work industry and multinational philanthropic organisations. The potential social cost of accepting the offer or seeking social responsibility from the philanthrocapitalists for educational institutions, particularly for women in the Global South, has also evaded scholarly scrutiny in the language disciplines. Drawing from an ethnographic study of a group of women garment workers from socio-economically less privileged backgrounds studying in a private international university, the article addresses these gaps by examining the communicative modelling of the social persona of an “empowered woman”, with attention to the affects and effects involved in the process.