Kathryn Moeller

press release: In celebration of Women's History Month, the Wisconsin Book Festival welcomes UW Professor, Kathryn Moeller, to discuss her exploration of women and girls in the new world economy. How and why are U.S. transnational corporations investing in the lives, educations, and futures of poor, racialized girls and women in the Global South? Is it a solution to ending poverty? Or is it a pursuit of economic growth and corporate profit?

Drawing on more than a decade of research in the United States and Brazil, this book focuses on how the philanthropic, social responsibility, and business practices of various corporations use a logic of development that positions girls and women as instruments of poverty alleviation and new frontiers for capitalist accumulation. Using the Girl Effect, the philanthropic brand of Nike, Inc., as a central case study, the book examines how these corporations seek to address the problems of gendered poverty and inequality, yet do so using an instrumental logic that shifts the burden of development onto girls and women without transforming the structural conditions that produce poverty. With a keen eye towards justice, author Kathryn Moeller concludes that these corporatized practices de-politicize girls’ and women’s demands for fair labor practices and a just global economy.

Kathryn Moeller is an assistant professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Over the past decade, she has studied the effects of corporate power on gender and racial equity. She received her Ph.D. in education with a focus on gender, women, and sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley. She was previously a high school teacher.