The inclusive complexities of feminist technologies: How “empowering” consumer products empower and disempower

Consumer empowerment and disempowerment play key roles in marketplace inclusion and exclusion, yet there is a lack of robust understanding of how they are simultaneously experienced within consumer contexts. In this paper, we examine their coexistence in the context of reusable menstrual products (e.g., menstrual cups and period underwear). We build on work conceptualizing these consumer products as feminist technologies, which are tools and knowledge that provide opportunities for women’s empowerment by deconstructing, through their use, patriarchal systems. Interestingly, and pertinent to our goal of unpacking a key factor in marketplace inclusion and exclusion, feminist technologies can simultaneously liberate and constrain, can empower different consumers in different ways, and can have unintended negative consequences for consumers. Using a mixed-method approach, we conducted four studies, including three online surveys with different populations of participants, and a set of semi-structured interviews using conventional and reusable menstrual products as stimuli. We find that consumers experience empowerment and disempowerment as trajectories—compelling directions of possibility for individual empowerment or disempowerment and collective action. As consumers encounter these competing trajectories, they experience tension between them. We identify four sites of tension: the embodied individual experience of managing menstrual processes, interactions with others, encounters with the marketplace, and broader societal engagement. Our findings articulate the entangled coexistence of empowerment and disempowerment, showing that they are inherently intertwined and play a complex role in supporting or inhibiting inclusion. Theoretical implications are discussed.