Genderwashing: Despite the Surge of Organizational Feminist Posts in the Media, Women’s Rights, Health, and Participation in Leadership Have Not Improved
Gender equality has gone corporate. Empowerment is trending, and institutions are fluent in the language of inclusion—but when feminism becomes a marketing strategy, what happens to real power, policy, and progress? Behind the glossy branding lies a troubling truth: institutional inaction, stalled reforms, and a persistent refusal to confront structural inequality. Despite gender equality marketing and feel-good narratives being louder than ever, the situation for women has not seen significant improvement in the past 15 years. This is not genuine progress; this disconnect between visibility and substance is a form of genderwashing —a superficial promotion of women’s rights through marketing and virtue signaling without meaningful, long-term material changes in policies, workforce structures, or decision-making representation.
Genderwashing follows the same rhetorical pattern as “greenwashing” or “whitewashing:” it describes the practice of promoting an image of support for gender equality—for instance through public relations (PR) campaigns, social media posts, or branding—without enacting meaningful structural change. Genderwashing is about optics over action; it occurs when companies, organizations, institutions or public figures express support for women’s rights or gender equality, particularly on high-profile occasions such as International Women’s Day, without implementing real, substantive changes to correct gender imbalances, not even within their own structures.
This is a guest post by Alice Violle, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation, and former Program Officer working with the Congo Research Group team. All opinions and views expressed in this article solely represent the views of the author.