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Renewing the Commitments of Feminist Public Relations Theory From Velvet Ghetto to Social Justice

Kim Golombisky

To cite this article: Kim Golombisky (2015) Renewing the Commitments of Feminist Public Relations Theory From Velvet Ghetto to Social Justice, Journal of Public Relations Research, 27:5, 389-415, DOI: 10.1080/1062726X.2015.1086653

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1062726X.2015.1086653

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Renewing the Commitments of Feminist Public Relations Theory From Velvet Ghetto to Social Justice

Kim Golombisky

Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of South Florida

Feminist scholarship in public relations thrives. This work, however, tends to focus on practitioners,

relies mostly on liberal and radical feminisms, adopts sociological and sometimes psychological

models of gender, and remains too White and too first world. To update this impressive body of

work, I recommend several theoretical adjustments: First, reclaim Lana Rakow’s communication

model of gender as performative to accommodate embodiment and multiple fluid identifications

across context and time. Second, define diverse women through intersectionality and interstitiality

as method and habit to get past the paradoxes of binary difference. Third, build on equality goals

to encompass social justice goals that expand and serve the mission of public relations beyond

the organization. Last, I illustrate these theoretical moves by way of transnational, third space,

and Womanist feminisms in terms of the commitments of feminist public relations theory.

Although feminist research in public relations ranks among the most developed feminist

literatures in mass communications, it has been roughly a decade since the last review of fem-

inist theory in public relations (see Aldoory, 2005; Grunig, 2006; O’Neil, 2003). In this article, I

assess the vitality of feminist thought in public relations. I argue that feminist public relations

theory is poised to take up gender theorizations of performative intersectionality and feminist

commitments to social justice.

Toth and Cline (2007) wrote that feminist theory has helped advance public relations in three

ways: debunking research that suggests women lack what it takes to be successful in public rela-

tions, revealing the ways that androcentric social science naturalizes asymmetrical gender to

women’s detriment, and advocating for change that empowers women and in doing so improves

public relations. Arguing that feminist theory, by definition, is critical work, Rakow and Nastasia

(2009) distinguished between feminist theory for public relations and critical feminist theory of

public relations; the former emphasizes how gendered people advance public relations as field

and discipline, and the latter concerns itself with the part that public relations plays in the quality

of gendered people’s lives within the wider social order beyond the organization. In that sense,

feminist public relations theory should be relevant beyond the mechanics of how public relations

works to emphasize social justice dimensions of public relations practice in the wider society.

Here I define social justice broadly as the sustainable material and social circumstances in which

Correspondence should be sent to Kim Golombisky, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of

South Florida CMC 342, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa, FL 33620. E-mail: [email protected]

Journal of Public Relations Research, 27: 389–415, 2015

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1062-726X print/1532-754X online

DOI: 10.1080/1062726X.2015.1086653

all people enjoy general wellbeing, participate in self-determining communities, and thrive in the

pursuit of fulfilling lives.

My review of the literature, however, finds feminist theory in public relations focused mostly

on practitioners and to a much lesser extent organizations, rather than publics or social influence

and responsibility. Moreover, feminist public relations scholars’ justified interest in the status of

women as practitioners, nonetheless, too often has assumed a White heterosexual able-bodied

professional. Additionally, although numbers of feminist public relations scholars subscribe to

social constructionist views gender, most studies never provide operational definitions,

let alone critiques, of gender. Furthermore, because most of this work has advocated for women

working in public relations, it has found theoretical affinity with liberal and radical feminist phi-

losophies, which rely on first world notions of equality. Nor does this work generally recognize a

number of paradoxes that feminist thought is forced to inhabit, including the difficulties of (a)

making the exigencies of gender knowable without reinforcing the binaries that asymmetrical

gender depends upon, (b) making claims on behalf of women while recognizing differences

among women, (c) communicating through gendered language, and (d) accounting for

embodiment without defaulting to biological determinism.

Thus, I make several recommendations to update feminist theory in public relations in the

hope of renewing feminist commitments to public relations. First, define gender as performative,

a perspective historically related to communication and compatible with intersectionality.

Second, embrace intersectionality as theory and method of accounting for positionality. Third,

shift our goals from gender equality to social justice, a more encompassing accounting of not

only intersectional performative people—practitioners and publics—but also public relations

as practice, discipline, and social phenomenon. Fourth, expand the range of feminist philoso-

phies beyond liberal and radical feminisms. As examples, I suggest transnational, third space,

and womanist feminisms, which accommodate intersectional identifications and social justice

outcomes to stretch the boundaries of public relations.

Toward a critical feminist theory of public relations, in what follows, I present these ideas in

three sections. First, I introduce feminist theory, including feminist communication theory and

paradoxes of gender theory, to provide a lens through which to examine feminist work in public

relations. Second, then, I provide a primer on feminist scholarship in public relations, including

its historical origins, the range of issues studied, the varieties of feminist philosophies employed,

the ways this work theorizes gender, and, finally, feminist theoretical work unique to public

relations. My interpretation of this work suggests a number of theoretical adjustments regarding

gender, intersectionality, feminist thought, and social justice, which I cover in the third section.

THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS’ FEMINIST COMMITMENTS

Feminist theory’s commitments extend beyond documenting the status of women’s equality to

critique not only gender, but also the social justice implications of interlocking oppressions and

privileges for all people. This sets up a number of paradoxes that feminist work must abide. If

left unrecognized, these paradoxes undermine clarity of thinking about women, gender, and

social justice. Dilemmas arise not only in understanding differences between people who live

as women and men, but also in addressing differences among those who identify as women.

390 GOLOMBISKY

Feminist Theory: Definitions and Commitments

As practiced in the United States context with a mostly Eurocentric perspective, theoretical work

in academic feminism ‘‘attempts to describe, explain, and analyze the conditions of women’s

lives,’’ according to Kolmar and Bartkowski (2010, p. 2). They wrote:

The basic issue that has concerned feminist theory is, depending on the terms one prefers, women’s

inequality, subordination, or domination by men. At the root of these is gender asymmetry—the

designation of women and things associated with women as different from, inferior to, of lesser value

than men and things associated with men. Feminist theories examine and try to explain the causes

and conditions in which men are more powerful and men’s production, ideas, and activities are seen

as having greater value and higher status than women’s. (p. 2)

However, as women-of-color feminists pointed out early and often, people experience gender

differently depending on their multiple intersecting identifications inextricably entangled with

gender (Anzaldúa, 1987; Beal, 1970; Collins, 1986, 1990=2000; Davis, 1981; Dill, 1983; hooks,

1981, 1984; Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982; Lorde, 1984; Mohanty, Russo, Torres, 1991; Moraga &

Anzaldúa, 1981; Sandoval, 1991; Williams, 1991). For feminist theory, it becomes a moral

imperative also to examine interlocking systems of oppressions based on race, ethnicity, class,

age, ability, sexuality, nationality, and religion, among others. In point of fact, feminist theory,

like law and policy, struggles toward inclusivity, given expanding and shifting categories and

concepts regarding difference, the body, and lived experience. Contemporary theories of dis-

ability, along with contemporary models of sex, gender, gender role, gender identity, gender

expression, sexual identity, sexual orientation, and others, are historically and culturally specific.

Depending on the theories or models, they also at times are contradictory. Furthermore, queer

and trans- theories deconstruct reliance on neat types and hierarchical dualisms, which compli-

cates feminisms’ political commitments to improving the lives of not only diverse women but

also self-defined gender and sexual minorities—women or otherwise. Thus, feminist theory is

about more than gender and women, even as feminist thought also troubles the categories of

gender and woman. Recognizing all these qualifiers and caveats, I nonetheless use the word

gender to refer to the mechanisms that enjoin people to live as women or men.

Feminist Communication Theory: Definitions and Commitments

In communication, feminist theory describes, explains, and analyzes gender, communication,

and social change (Rakow & Wackwitz, 2004). First, gender must be communicated to be

known. In Beyond the Velvet Ghetto, Rakow (1989) wrote, ‘‘Gender is not something we are

but something we do and believe’’ (p. 289). Rakow (1986) generally has not been given the

credit she deserves for ‘‘rethinking gender’’ as performative—prior to Butler (1990, 1993,

2004). I will return to gender as performative. But for the moment, I think it important to empha-

size Rakow’s (1989) contribution, coming not only out of communication but also before gender

performativity was popularized more broadly in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. In

public relations scholarship, however, gender performativity has been not widely adopted,

although numbers of communications feminists have noted the need to treat gender critically

(Aldoory, 2005; Dow & Condit, 2005; Golombisky, 2006, 2010; Grunig, Toth, & Hon, 2001;

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 391

Rakow & Nastasia, 2009). Aldoory (2005), wrote, ‘‘Gender should be studied as a constructed

and problematic concept’’ (p. 674).

Second, Rakow and Wackwitz proposed that feminist theory in communication addresses

difference, voice, and representation (Rakow & Wackwitz, 2004; Wackwitz & Rakow, 2007).

Communication scholars must account for differences among women, and between women

and men. They must be sensitive to who may or may not have a voice in a given context, on

behalf of whom, and whose voice has value. If voice can silence, silence also can speak. One

might privilege voice over silence, or overlook the ways silence or voice can communicate

power and privilege or protest and resistance, rather than consensus, accord, submission, or sup-

pression (Bell & Golombisky, 2004). As to the politics of representation in communication insti-

tutions and practices, again, one must be cognizant of whose realities are represented, how they

are represented, and by whom. Consequently, to feminist communication theory’s stakes in

questions about difference, voice, and representation, I add questions about access and power.

Who has access up=in=to organizations, institutions, technologies, decision making=makers,

and democratic process? Who lacks a social presence to begin with? And how do scholars expli-

cate power, theoretically and materially? Last, regarding communication and social change,

Wackwitz and Rakow (2007) argued that feminist communication theory should be more than

explanatory, but also explicitly political, rather than neutral, polyvocal as in inclusive and demo-

cratic, and transformative by way of activism and advocacy. Inclusive social advocacy, however,

raises some dilemmas.

Gender Theory and the Paradoxes of Difference

To begin with, gender only becomes relevant with the addition or recognition of women as a

distinct group (Aldoory, 2005; Golombisky, 2006). Steiner (2012) observed that women ‘‘are

regarded as the intruder, the exception, the problem’’ so ‘‘for better or worse, gender research

usually is about women’’ (pp. 201–202). A paradox arises in recognizing women in all their

diversity as a social category without invoking feminine categories as substandard, derivative,

or inferior cases descended from masculine ones, always assumed to be standard, normal,

superior, and transcending gender. Strategically reversing the order, such as suggesting the

superiority of feminine categories compared to masculine ones, does not dispel the problem

of a binary gender hierarchy, either. Furthermore, valuing women and the feminine does not neu-

tralize the risk of essentialist thinking, such as notions of the feminine and femininity as nat-

urally bound to women. Meanwhile, commonsense understandings of gender, and so women,

are braided through heteronormativity and heterosexism in ways feminist public relations theory

has not sorted out. At the same time, casting women as a social category or class of people

obscures significant differences of experience among people living as women.

Just as vexing is the paradox of so-called minority women. On the one hand, the phrase

minority women explicitly and necessarily directs attention to the experiences of women who

have not enjoyed voice, representation, power, or access. On the other hand, minority women positions the vast range of women bearing that label as an undifferentiated special Other, thus

marginal, case of women in the same way that women become a marginal case of mankind.

In reality, minority women, defined as not White, not Anglo, comprise an international majority.

It also is true that in the United States minority women typically functions euphemistically for

392 GOLOMBISKY

non-White race and, in particular, Black; while also problematically implying that White does

not have race or color. African American women share a US history of ‘‘double jeopardy’’

(Beal, 1970), exclusion from the categories of (presumptively White) women and (presump-

tively male) Blacks, even as race itself remains a discursive construction, albeit with serious,

even deadly, material effects. In addition, minority understood as non-White race occludes dif-

ferences across raced categories while also erasing numerical and social minority categories and

groups based on differences other than race, from religion and cultural ethnicity to

socio-economic status=class, disability, age, and sexuality, for example.

In the struggle to understand difference inclusively, language betrays at every turn. As Burke

(1961=1970) observed, humans are ‘‘goaded by the spirit of hierarchy’’ (p. 40). Binaries trigger

asymmetrical rankings of superior=inferior. In linguistics, the problem is called marked language. There is no English language with which to represent women without marking them

as not-man or minus-male (Spender, 1985). In English, all words associated with women and

feminine forms are derogated in opposition to masculine ones, which stand as the neutral ideal

originals. Even beyond gender, the derogation of marked language is common. There is the dif-

ficulty of naming the multiple consciousnesses of non-White women of color without marking

non-White as yet another literal and linguistic negative constructed against whiteness. Disability

remains the linguistic, social, and legal negative of ability defined to value particular bodies and

ways of perceiving. Nor is there vocabulary to make ordinary, not extraordinary, lesbian, gay,

bisexual, asexual, queer, pan, and questioning sexualities.

Finally, over and above language, material bodies also foil feminist thought—twice over—

first by the paradox of Fuss’ (1989) cultural essentialism and second by the paradox of ontologi-

cal embodiment. As to cultural essentialism, rejecting biologically determined gender for discur-

sively or socially constructed gender suggests that gender essentially emerges from culture; such

thinking merely replaces one essentialist definition of gender with another (Fuss, 1989). Further-

more, neither gender erupting from within the body nor gender written externally by culture

upon the body validates the gendered individual agency (‘‘biology is not destiny’’) and embo-

died experience (‘‘the personal is the political’’) that feminist movement has spent decades

championing. New material feminisms fold a third wrinkle into the paradox of the body by ques-

tioning the very existence of a discrete human body separable from environment (e.g., Alaimo &

Hekman, 2008; Barad, 1998; Haraway, 1991).1 Perhaps the body and our sense of embodiment

result from complex biosocial interplay. How would people’s logics and commitments change if

they let go of beliefs in natural (essential) boundaries between self and environment?

All this leads to the dilemma of how to understand equality among diverse women and

between women and men if all claims about women are always too diverse to generalize from

and about, while in all ways and in all things women connote difference as a subgroup of

mankind. Even the promise of androgyny and gender neutrality fails, because both almost always

end up looking suspiciously like hegemonic androcentric masculinity, although queer and trans-

theories hold some promise to put an end to binary heteronormative gender. Still, at every turn,

the symbolic order and language undermine the efforts of feminist scholars, researchers, and

activists, and every claim they make is subject to increasing numbers of qualifications.

1Alaimo and Hekman (2008) wrote, ‘‘It is important to distinguish what we are calling ‘material feminism’—which is

emerging primarily from corporeal feminism, environmental feminism, and science studies—from ‘materialist’ feminism,

which emerges from, or is synonymous with, Marxist feminism’’ (p. 18).

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 393

In the next section, I demonstrate how these paradoxes play out in feminist public relations

scholarship. Afterward, I offer some recommendations to recognize and deal with these para-

doxes to get on with the work of feminist public relations theory. These will not be especially

provocative proposals; they are more a kind of tweaking to update. In short, I argue for treating

gender as performative to sidestep biological and cultural essentialisms, defining diverse women

through intersectionality as habit and method, and moving beyond the mathematics of

greater-than radical feminism and equal-to liberal feminism to focus on social justice for goals.

FEMINIST SCHOLARSHIP IN PUBLIC RELATIONS

Because feminist scholarship in public relations developed from concerns about the status of

women working in public relations, feminist literature in public relations emphasizes practi-

tioners’ employment issues. Although many of these workplace gender issues are not unique

to public relations careers, public relations feminists have developed a body of theoretical work

unique to public relations on the topics of a feminized field, gendered values in the practice, gen-

dered organizations, critical race theory applied to practitioners, and intersectional identities of

not only practitioners but also publics. In terms of adopting mainstream feminist thought, how-

ever, public relations feminists’ interest in practitioners has tended to limit analysis to liberal

feminist ideals of women’s equality to men at work and radical feminist perspectives on orga-

nizational bias against women (Aldoory, 2005; Rakow & Nastasia, 2009). Furthermore, in terms

of gender theory, women and men tend to be defined as unproblematic variables and units of

analysis (Aldoory, 2005; Grunig et al., 2001; Rakow & Nastasia, 2009).

Origins of Feminist Scholarship in Public Relations: Velvet Ghetto

As the numbers of women entering public relations in the 1970s and 1980s markedly increased, the

professional community began to complain that organizations were hiring women into public

relations functions as a way to both marginalize women and prove affirmative action hiring. Others

worried that an increasing feminization of the public relations department meant a loss of its pro-

fessional stature and management influence. This raised concerns about pink-collar ghettos where

prestige drops and wages stagnate wherever women become the majority in fields such as education,

clerical=administrative support, and allied health. In public relations, pink-collar ghetto translated as

velvet ghetto. By 1986, the International Association of Business Communicators-funded Velvet Ghetto study concluded that fields numerically dominated by women, such as public relations,

do lose salary and status; women in public relations tend to self-select into lower-influence

lower-pay technician roles as opposed to higher-influence higher-pay management roles; yet women

in public relations are paid significantly less than men even after ruling out variables other than gen-

der (Cline et al., 1986). The IABC’s 1989 follow-up Beyond the Velvet Ghetto reported more of the

same; the significant salary gap between women and men in public relations was not closing, and

both women and men still did not view women as management material (Toth & Cline, 1989).

Feminist Issues in Public Relations Research: Gendered Practitioners

From its velvet ghetto origins, then, feminist public relations scholarship focused on

practitioners as workers, especially women, and particularly regarding hiring, promotion, and

394 GOLOMBISKY

salary issues (Aldoory & Toth, 2002; Cline et al., 1986; Grunig et al., 2001; Toth & Cline,

1989). To a lesser extent, feminist scholars examined the specifics of women of color and min-

ority women in public relations careers (Kern-Foxworth, 1989a, 1989b; Kern-Foxworth, Gandy,

Hine, & Miller 1994; Len-Rios, 1998; Pompper, 2004, 2007; Tindall, 2009; Zerbinos &

Clanton, 1993). Some feminist work also has focused on women working in public relations

in other countries, although this work tends to reproduce US forms of public relations and

feminist thought. (See, for example, AlSaqer, 2008; Daymon & Surma, 2012; Fitch & Third,

2014; Simorangkir, 2011; Surma & Daymon, 2014; Tsetsura, 2012; Wu, 2006; Yeomans,

2014.) There remains a topical absence of lesbian women, as well as LGBTQIAA issues overall,

in public relations research, with some exceptions including lesbian millennial practitioners

(Gallicano, Curtin, & Matthews, 2012), gay practitioners (Tindall & Waters, 2012), and lesbian

publics in health messaging (Aldoory, 2009). The literature is similarly thin for public relations

scholarship on disabilities, feminist or otherwise.

In the literature, the topic of men as public relations employees comes up, too, in what I call

the prince syndrome, in which tiny minorities of men in public relations are treated like royalty.

The industry (and the academy) frets over the lack of men going into public relations and some-

times puts them on fast-track glass elevators and escalators to status and power. For example,

Aldoory and Toth (2002) noted that men are offered more salary and compensation in public

relations to recruit and retain them as a minority in what has become an industry of 70% women.

Such a phenomenon is unheard of when women are the gender minority.

In organizations, a public relations practitioner’s power is defined by prestige, status, and

compensation, i.e., organizational role. Roles research in public relations has a long relationship

with public relations feminism. Data and debates over the causes and effects of, and biased

research approaches to, public relations roles research continue to find women multitasking in

public relations as technicians and managers, even as women remain underrepresented and

underpaid in management, per se (Broom, 1982; Broom & Dozier, 1986; Cline et al., 1986;

Creedon, 1991; Dozier & Broom, 1995; Toth & Cline, 1989; Toth & Grunig, 1993; Toth, Serini,

Wright, & Emig, 1998). In the only feminist treatment of social media in public relations

research to date, Bridgen (2011) raised questions about gender, roles, and emotional labor. Other

research examines the organization, laden with sexist and hierarchical ideologies, as a source of

women’s second-class status in public relations (Aldoory & Toth, 2002; Creedon, 1993; Hon,

1995; O’Neil, 2003; Toth, 1988).

Additional feminist issues pertaining to women working in public relations parallel those

underscored for all working women in the wake of the second wave women’s movement.

These include the glass ceiling (Aldoory & Toth, 2002; Dozier, 1988; Grunig et al., 2001; Toth

& Cline, 1989; Wrigley, 2002) and the acrylic vault (Kern-Foxworth, 1989a, 1989b) that keep

women in all their diversity from being promoted up the career ladder.2 Feminist public

relations workplace issues also include all-too-common experiences of sexual harassment

2Glass ceiling refers to the phenomenon in which the career paths of women of all races and ethnicities stall at middle

management. Sticky floor describes careers that stall at the entry level, stuck at the ground floor of the organization.

Kern-Foxworth (1989a, p. 244) famously described the acrylic vault: ‘‘The assumption therefore is that minority practi-

tioners may be analogous to valuables locked in an acrylic vault. They’re there. They’re valuable. In fact, they’re worth

their weight in gold. And like gold they are quite conspicuous. Thus, they can be seen. And they can see what is happen-

ing in public relations. But for several reasons they are circumvented from participating in a major way in the daily

activities of the industry.’’

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 395

(Hon, 1995; Serini, Toth, Wright, & Emig, 1998), the pressures of so-called work–life balance

(Aldoory et al., 2008; Aldoory & Toth, 2002; Daymon & Surma, 2012; Hon, 1995), also

known as Shaevitz’s (1984) superwoman syndrome (Toth, 1988), and the pros and cons of

Schwartz’s (1989) controversial mommy track proposal (Dozier, Sha, & Okura, 2007; Hon,

1995; Toth & Cline, 1989). Some of this work seems to point to the so-called ill-advised

decisions women make when it comes their careers, such as choosing low-stress positions,

flex- and part-time schedules, and career hiatus. Such critiques tend to assume mostly hetero-

sexual women with children who have working spouses to finance the luxury of opting out of

what are presumed to be time-intensive high-stress fast-track careers, albeit in workplaces

designed by men for men assumed to have wives and=or domestic labor to helpmate work-life

balance for men. Sometimes observations regarding women’s ‘‘choices’’ come with

well-intended advice for how women should adapt (Toth & Cline, 1989). Others critique such

advice as victim blaming that makes women responsible for their own discrimination as well as

ending it (Creedon, 2004; Grunig, 2006; Hon, 1995; Hon, Grunig, & Dozier, 1992; Toth, 1988;

Toth & Cline, 2007).

Feminist Thought in Public Relations: Liberal and Radical3

In studying women working in public relations, feminist public relations scholars have relied

heavily on liberal and radical feminist thought (Pompper, 2005; Rakow & Nastasia, 2009).4

In these configurations, liberal feminism is about advancing women to be equal to men in a

man’s world, and radical feminism is about transforming the man’s world. For example, AlSaqer

(2008) ‘‘suggests combined liberal and radical feminist strategies to improve the role of Bahraini

women in public relations’’ (p. 79); liberal strategies include empowering women as managers,

and radical strategies include reforms such as flextime and childcare. Public relations feminists

occasionally work from the priorities of Black feminist theorists such as Collins (1990=2000)

and hooks (1984), along with Womanist (Walker, 1983) models that recognize the specifics

of African American women’s oppressions and triumphs. For example, Tindall (2009) cited

Collins’ (1990=2000, p.12) ‘‘outsider within’’ the organization to frame the marginalization

of Black female public relations faculty members who experience the double bind of always

already being Black and women. Some have nodded to socialist and Marxist feminisms, as well,

which focus on class, capitalism, and women’s place in the political economy. Weaver-Lariscy

and her research colleagues have argued that socialist feminism’s interest in macro problems of

uneven resource distribution helps to explain women’s inability to access organizational power

and equal wages in public relations (Weaver-Lariscy, Cameron, & Sweep, 1994; Weaver Lar-

iscy, Sallot, & Cameron, 1996).

3There is an undergraduate ‘‘feminist math’’ for memorizing varieties of feminist philosophies, beginning with post-

feminism 6¼ feminism. In liberal feminism, women¼men. In radical feminism, women>men. In cultural feminism,

women 6¼ men. In socialist=Marxist feminism, women¼ a caste=class. In womanism, ‘‘a Womanist is to feminist as pur-

ple is to lavender’’ (Walker, 1983, p. xii). In psychoanalytic feminism, woman¼ lack. According to poststructuralist fem-

inism, women¼Ø outside of language and the symbolic order that constructs them. 4See, for example, Aldoory and Toth (2002), Choi and Hon (2002), Farmer and Waugh (1999), Grunig et al. (2001),

Hon (1995); Hon et al. (1992), Simorangkir (2011), Tam, Dozier, Lauzen, and Real (1995), and Wrigley (2002).

396 GOLOMBISKY

Limited Gender Theory in Public Relations: Social Constructionism

Although most public relations feminists embrace the social construction of gender, operational

definitions are rare (Aldoory, 2005; Dow & Condit, 2005; Golombisky, 2006, 2010; Grunig

et al., 2001; Rakow & Nastasia, 2009). Aldoory (2005) observed that feminist scholars in public

relations tend to default to defining ‘‘gender as female’’ and to measuring ‘‘sex differences.’’

She wrote that ‘‘although gender was communicated as a social construction, it was measured

and defined as a classification system based on biology’’ (p. 672). As Aldoory noted, this is

understandable, given that feminist and gender scholars in public relations have focused on

‘‘females in their roles as practitioners and compared females to males in terms of differences

in work variables, such as salary, management level, and perceptions of sexual harassment’’

(p. 672).

In sum, feminist research in pubic relations, in advocating on behalf of women, has tended to

emphasize liberal feminist equality to men. Much less developed in the literature are intersec-

tional and standpoint studies accounting for the particularities of gender understood through

race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, class, nationality, age, etc. Nor is there much in the feminist

public relations literature on people who do not work in public relations, such as publics, or on

public relations’ roles and influence beyond advancing the mission of the organization.5

Nonetheless, the literature does boast a distinct body of work that merits the label feminist public relations theory.

Five Feminist Public Relations Theoretical Traditions

In addition to understanding feminist scholarship in public relations in terms of historical origins

and professional issues studied, one also might examine the feminist literature in public relations

in terms of work unique to public relations, including velvet ghetto (Cline et al., 1986; Toth &

Cline, 1989), feminine=feminist values (Aldoory, 1998; Grunig, Toth, & Hon, 2000; Rakow,

1989), racial and ethnic specificity such as Kern-Foxworth’s (1989a) acrylic vault and

Pompper’s (2004) ethnic solidarity worldview=acquiescence paradox, Creedon’s (1993) infra-

system in gendered organizations, and intersectionality related to situational publics and the

practitioner-as-public conflict (Vardeman-Winter, Jiang, & Tindall, 2014; Vardeman-Winter,

Tindall, & Jiang, 2013).

Velvet Ghetto as Feminist Public Relations Theory

Velvet ghetto theory has sustained efforts to model the complexities of glass ceiling, sticky

floor, and acrylic vault variables in public relations over time and across a changing social

landscape. Hon’s (1995) groundbreaking work ‘‘toward a feminist theory of public relations’’

provides an exemplar. Her study was theoretically inductive and privileged the voices of her

research subjects to answer the questions ‘‘What factors explain discrimination against women

in public relations?’’ and ‘‘Which liberal=radical feminist strategies can effect equity for

5Moreover, it goes without saying that public relations concentrates on the public sphere, implicitly understood as the

symbolic domain where privileged masculinities are performed, as opposed to the private sphere, relegated to fantasies

about idealized middle-class womanhood and her role in sustaining the heteronormative patriarchal family.

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 397

women?’’ Explanatory factors included public relations’ marginalization, flawed college

curricula, male-dominated workplaces, sexual harassment, lookism, ageism, gender stereotypes,

women’s balancing acts, and other marketplace factors. Strategies offered included not only

education, women empowering themselves, and working for change from within the system,

but also prescriptions for broader changes in public relations as well as society. Like Hon’s

(1995) research question regarding ‘‘liberal=radical feminist strategies,‘‘ velvet ghetto research

might explain public relations’ interest in liberal and radical feminist thought. Documenting the

status of women in pubic relations lends itself to liberal analysis, and efforts to transform public

relations lean toward radical feminist analysis. As I have shown, however, velvet ghetto theory

may reject unfair gender roles and sexist stereotypes, but its unproblematic assumptions about

‘‘female practitioners’’ depend on what Dow and Condit (2005) criticized as ‘‘simple dummy

variables of male and female biological sex’’ (p. 464).

Feminine=Feminist Values as Feminist Public Relations Theory

Related to velvet ghetto, feminine=feminist values theory posits that values typically

derogated as feminine and associated with or assigned to women, such as being relationally

attuned to cooperation, advance a feminist agenda and make better public relations practice as

defined by two-way symmetrical communication (Grunig, 1989b; Grunig, 2001) and excellence

theory (Dozier, Grunig, & Grunig, 1995; Grunig, 1992b; Grunig, Grunig, & Dozier, 2002; Toth,

2007). Responding to calls to make public relations more macho (Hunt, 1989; Hunt & Thomp-

son, 1987), Rakow (1989) pointed out that masculine management values of competition and

hierarchical chain of command are at odds with good public relations practice. Rakow argued

that public relations might be better off embracing its new feminization, in place of rushing

to frame it as a problem to be fixed.

Unfortunately, Aldoory’s (1998) empirical research on the language of women’s leadership in

public relations unintentionally seemed to strengthen a perceived natural or hardwired essenti-

alist link between women’s so-called natural gender and their so-called naturally attentive caring

communication styles. Later, Grunig et al. (2000, p. 49) suggested that what had been described

as ‘‘feminine values’’ in public relations were actually ‘‘feminist values’’: ‘‘cooperation,

respect, caring, nurturance, interconnection, justice, equity, honesty, sensitivity,’’ among others.

Emphasizing feminine values as strategic essentialism, not biological determinism, Sha (2001)

clarified the difference between derogated feminine values relegated to women and respected

feminine values subscribed to by women and men in public relations. Feminist values theory

in public relations is not intended to position women as naturally or biologically feminine,

although without an explicit entrée into strategic essentialism (see, for example, Schor & Weed,

1989), it is easy to read feminine=feminist values as biology is destiny. Feminine-values-as-

the-equivalent-of-feminism is thoughtful appropriation and resistance designed to unseat and

reframe sexist ideology.

Nevertheless, caution is warranted because it is a slippery slope from strategic essentialism

that reframes stereotypically gendered values associated with people who live as women and

men to reifying and naturalizing such stereotypes (Andsager & Hust, 2005; Fröhlich, 2004;

Fröhlich & Peters, 2007). Although not labeled as such, feminine=feminist values theory in pub-

lic relations can be interpreted as a form of cultural feminism, sometimes known as the different

worlds model, which argues that women and men are reared in, and so live in, what amounts to

398 GOLOMBISKY

separate cultures (Golombisky, 2002). Hence, women develop different ways of being, knowing,

and communicating that are attuned to relational caring and cooperation (Belenky, Clinchy,

Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Gilligan, 1982; Tannen, 1990). Cultural feminism is associated

with psychological models of gender, which Grunig et al. (2000) used to define gender as ‘‘bio-

logical functions assigned at birth’’ (p. 51) and sex as ‘‘social rather than biological difference’’

(p. 53). Psychological definitions of gender as nature and sex as nurture are the reverse of social

constructionist models that posit gender as nurture and sex as nature.

Feminist Public Relations Theories of Racial and Ethnic Specificity

Feminist theories of race and ethnicity in public relations push social constructionism toward

critical theory and feminist post-structuralism by accounting for discourse, power relations, and

interlocking identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender. Beginning with Kern-Foxworth’s

(1989a) acrylic vault theory, key work in this area focuses on non-White women of color mak-

ing careers in public relations (Aldoory, 2005; Kern-Foxworth, 1989b; Kern-Foxworth et al.,

1994; Pompper, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2014). The acrylic vault described pervasive and persistent

affirmative action tokenism, in which minority public relations professionals described feeling

trapped in powerless technician ‘‘show positions’’ (Kern-Foxworth, 1989a).

Later, she wrote that little has changed for women of color since the mid-1980s

(Kern-Foxworth, 2004). The majority Whiteness of public relations has not precipitated wide-

spread interest in examining race and ethnicity in public relations, in the same way that the

numerical majority of men in public relations did not precipitate an examination of gender in

public relations—until men weren’t the majority anymore. Race and ethnicity often are treated

as a single category of not White Other and as separable and separate from gender, while also

treating Whiteness as an unraced category. Aldoory (2005, p. 672) found diversity in public rela-

tions defined as racial and ethnic inclusion in the practice of public relations and measured as

‘‘numerical balance.’’ Similarly, Pompper’s (2005) review of the ways public relations scholars

have covered race, ethnicity, and cultural difference across 3 decades of research found diversity

covered as sampling categories and as a public relations problem.

After critiquing the shortfalls of descriptive demography and prescriptive ethics in the public

relations canon, Pompper (2004, p. 289) documented the voices of African American women

working as public relations professionals, who described an ‘‘ethnic solidarity world- view=acquiescence paradox’’ and a unique practice of two-way symmetry enacting different role

interpretations than the literature. The paradox describes the ways participants negotiate a bal-

ancing act between racial=ethnic pride and choosing battles wisely in a world where racism

and sexism interlock to produce a less-than-welcoming work environment for African American

women. The different roles that participants described included pioneering, educating, mentor-

ing, and issues agenda-building. Pompper (2004) then theorized ethnic diversity into a refine-

ment of J. E. Grunig’s (1992b) public relations potential variable in excellence theory.

Pompper (2004, 2005, 2007, 2012, 2014) demonstrated the way gender is always constituted

through race and ethnicity, and vice versa. Pompper informed her social constructionist view

of gender, race, and ethnicity with Black feminisms (Collins, 1990=2000; Dill, 1983; hooks,

1984; Houston, 1992), critical race theory (Crenshaw, 1991; Taylor, 1998; Williams, 1991),

and feminist standpoint theory (Allen, 2000; Collins, 1986, 1997; Hartsock, 1983b). Pompper

(2007) argued, ‘‘Specifically, the conceptual framework of ‘multiracial feminism’ underscores

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 399

the primary force of ethnicity=race in understanding the social construction of gender by avoid-

ing any unified feminism’’ (pp. 292–293).

Pompper’s (2004, 2005, 2007, 2014) insistence on situated knowledges (Haraway, 1991;

Lorde, 1984) complements Aldoory’s (2005) description of a (re)conceived feminist paradigm in public relations that focuses on gender, power, and diversity. Aldoory (2005, p. 673)

described gender as ‘‘socially constituted though communicative acts,’’ although she stoped

short of invoking performativity. She did, however, describe gendered ‘‘actors’’ who communi-

cate gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity to create ‘‘situated knowledge’’ (p. 676).

Critical-theoretic, rather than empirical, and reflective of Foucault’s (1979, 1980) discursive con-

struction of reality, Aldoory’s (2005) reimagined feminist paradigm describes gender as learned

(not female), power as discursive (not property), and diversity as contextual (not numerical).

This aligns her work with French poststructural and postmodern feminisms that emphasize sym-

bolic, linguistic, and psychoanalytic systems more than social interaction as the foundations of

the social order, including gender.

Infrasystem as Gender Lens in Feminist Public Relations Theory

If feminine=feminist values theory draws attention to the gendering of public relations

functions, then feminist public relations theories of the gendered organization explain how

organizations work in formal and informal ways to enforce a gendered social arrangement.

Creedon (1993) built on systems theory approaches to the organization, including (as)symmetri-

cal communication. She modeled ‘‘infrasystem’’ as a third structure beyond supra- and subsys-

tems to expose ‘‘assumptions about gender, race, class and sexuality’’ that privilege the

dominant group’s perspectives within organizations. ‘‘Adding an infrasystem analysis,’’ she

argued, ‘‘does not allow systems theorists to ignore gender, race, class and sexuality as a fun-

damental organizing principle’’ (p. 160). Creedon revealed male-defined values, management

bias, and patterns of privilege that drive organizations and systems analysis of them. Creedon’s

‘‘revisionary paradigm,’’ addressing difference, access, voice, and power, has not been widely

adopted. O’Neil (2003), however, argued that organizational structure and environment do

contribute to men’s greater power and access to influence. Examining the relationship between

formal structural power and gendered practitioners’ organizational influence, she found that even

when women and men have equivalent management roles in equivalent-sized organizations, men

are granted greater access to centers of organizational power and influence (O’Neil, 2003).

Neither Creedon (1993) nor O’Neil (2003) explicitly defined gender. Creedon’s (1993)

‘‘critical feminist perspective’’ is ‘‘derivative’’ of deconstructionism (p. 160). Both Creedon’s

and O’Neil’s work, however, might be characterized as radical feminism working to change

unjust systems and power structures.

Feminist Public Relations Applications of Intersectionality

From velvet ghetto to infrasystem, feminist public relations theories focus on the profession

and professionals, and much less so on publics. Jiang, Tindall, and Vardeman-Winter directed

feminist public relations theory toward addressing diverse publics in terms of intersectionality

(Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, 2014). They argued that an intersectional approach to public

relations research treats gender as ‘‘an oppressed, marginalized, or privileged social interaction

400 GOLOMBISKY

because of its intersection with race, class, sexual orientation, and age, among other identities’’

(Vardeman-Winter et al., 2014, p. 228).

Vardeman-Winter et al. (2014, p. 224) also described a ‘‘practitioner-as-public conflict’’ for

women in public relations. When women are both practitioners and members of the target public,

they may experience a conflict between organizational=career priorities=loyalties and the less

privileged gender realities and priorities of the target public of diverse women. They further

‘‘suggest that we should rethink our roles more as power agents=advocates rather than equals with

or representative of publics’’ (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, p. 297). By engaging the significant

methodological challenges of conducting empirical intersectional research, Vardeman-Winter

et al. (2013) joined the leading edge of contemporary academic feminisms, which likewise are

developing intersectional methodologies. Such engagement includes integrating critical theory’s

understanding of power as diffuse and productive in Aldoory’s (2005) sense with material barriers

to accessing institutional centers of authority, hence power, in Hon’s (1995) sense.

Vardeman-Winter et al. (2013, 2014) defined gender as intersectional with all of one’s iden-

tities, and, they wrote, ‘‘We view identities as social constructions’’ (2013, p. 280). They also

located their feminist philosophical foundations in Black feminism and critical race theory.

A strength of feminist public relations theory, and most feminist research in public relations,

remains its grounding in empirical work that improves the lives of diverse women and men in

the applied practices, and to a lesser extent the publics, of public relations. A potential weakness

of feminist public relations theory, and my position in this article, is that it has not taken full

advantage of contemporary approaches to performativity, intersectionality, and feminisms

developed by women of color. Furthermore, focusing on the profession results in a

short-sightedness tied to liberal and radical feminist notions of in=equality instead of public

relations’ role in matters of social justice.

THEORETICAL ADJUSTMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

In this last section before the conclusion, I reclaim performativity as a communication model of

gender that accommodates intersectional embodiment. I also attempt to clarify some dimensions

of intersectionality, including its social justice origins in Black feminism, to build on the work of

feminists who have been developing intersectionality and standpoint theory in public relations

(Pompper, 2007, 2014; Tindall & Waters, 2012; Vardeman-Winter, 2011; Vardeman-Winter

et al., 2013, 2014; Vardeman-Winter & Tindall, 2010; Waymer & Dyson, 2011). Finally, I offer

transnational feminism, third space feminism, and womanism as examples of theory and practice

that carry public relations feminism beyond second wave gender equity.

Performativity

To begin with gender as performative, Rakow and others have argued that gender is something

people do (Aldoory et al., 2009; Butler, 1990, 1993, 2004; Demetrious, 2014; Frye, 1983;

Golombisky, 2006, 2010, 2012; Rakow, 1986, 1989; West & Zimmerman, 1987; Yeomans,

2014). ‘‘Gender is accomplished through embodied performances accountable to social context,

which have social and material effects’’ (Golombisky, 2012, p. 21). Rakow (1986) argued that

‘‘ ‘gender is a verb’ created by and creating communication’’ (p. 11). Accordingly, Rakow’s take

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 401

on gender performativity is distinctly communicative. Adopting a communicative view of

gender performativity acknowledges material bodies in situ, accommodates embodied agency,

explains shifting enactments of gender over time and space, and displaces the nature-versus-

nurture stalemate. Performativity also accounts for intersectionality, i.e., performative under-

standings of multiple, fluid, and situated identifications, such as race, sexuality, disability,

age, and others, that in the most literal sense constitute gendered embodiment. The utility of

performativity as a theory of gender, however, does not elude Fuss’ (1989) ‘‘risk of reification

and solidification,’’ a risk we nonetheless must take, as others have observed (pp. 18–19).

I have demonstrated that public relations feminists generally embrace the social construction

of gender, as opposed to biological determinism. But socially constructed gender is a slightly

narrower view of fluid identities, such as gender, constructed between bodies from the outside

in. Others lodge a similar critique against poststructuralist views of gender as wholly symbolic

and language-based inscription upon the body (e.g., Alaimo & Hekman, 2008; Barad, 2003;

Fuss, 1989). In each case, gender remains external to the body. These views of gender as social

and=or linguistic effects do not adequately explain embodiment or agency, however constrained

by social taboo and symbolic order or interaction. Specifically, women need to be able to claim

the materiality of their embodied experiences, given the social, economic, legal, scientific, and

religious histories that deny diverse women that ontological right.

Whereas social constructionism is, for the most part, sociological, some public relations feminists

have adopted psychological concepts for operational definitions of gender and sex, which, again, are

not communication-centered. Performativity skips the sex word altogether in favor of gender as the

mechanism that produces and naturalizes ideas about binary sex, women and men, and femininity

and masculinity. Finally, although socially constructed gender is written upon the body from without,

psychologically constructed gender occurs inside the mind, which moves gender toward a form of

hardwired essentialism, not to mention indirect observable. Inside the body versus outside the body

remains an unproductive debate, again framed as an oppositional binary.

For feminist public relations theory, one can sidestep questions about gender’s origins by

defining gender as performative and agreeing to abandon sex because it offers no conceptual

utility for public relations. The interest is in gender, which accounts for not just communicating

women, men, intersex, transgender, and transsexual people, but gendered language, practices,

institutions, and organizations. Gender as Rakow’s (1986, 1989) what people believe and do

enables one to make empirical observations about the communication of gendered performances

and gendered performances as communication, including self-reported beliefs, without resorting

to unsubstantiated claims about the effects of biology, physiology, or anatomy. Gender as per-

formative enables one to document the communication of gender as-if-ness by which people act

as if binary gender is real and important.

Hence, human beings literally materialize gender through ritual enactments, very much in

Carey’s (1992) sense of ritual communication that creates, maintains, repairs, and, over time,

transforms reality. This is communicative performance that makes and breaks gender. Performa-

tivity then also explains the ways gender performances differ across history, geography, society,

culture, context, and individuals, who also enact race, class, sexuality, disability, and more, as

people define and discipline those positionalities within the social relations of their milieux.

If feminist public relations scholarship, for the most part, has assumed ‘‘the standard White

woman in public relations’’ (Aldoory, 2001), she is raced and uncritically presumed to be

able-bodied, cisgendered so that gender identity and birth assignment align, and heterosexual.

402 GOLOMBISKY

Certainly, gender and heteronormativity ‘‘are different mechanisms,’’ but ‘‘they function

reciprocally, each coercing ‘normal’ performances of gender that privilege heterosexuality’’

(Golombisky, 2012, p. 23). Tindall and Waters (2012) put forward the notion of performative

identities in their application of queer theory to a study of gay men working in public relations.

They complicate gender not just because studying gay men forces theoretical questions about

heteronormativity’s interaction with gender, as well as political questions about the heterosexism

in some approaches to gender. Rather, the whole point of queer theory is to upset binaries such

as female=male and gay=straight, and introducing the category of transgender begs further ques-

tions about gender identity and expression. Performativity explains the ways people are hailed to

enact their multiple identifications, as visible and invisible. Furthermore, each person is always

performing multiple intersecting and context-specific identifications.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality ‘‘emphasizes the interlocking effects of race, class, gender, and sexuality,

highlighting the ways in which categories of identity and structures of inequality are mutually

constituted and defy separation into discrete categories of analysis,’’ wrote Dill and Kohlman

(2012, p. 154). McCall (2005) posited intersectionality as one of the greatest contributions of

feminist theory to date. More accurately, intersectionality emerges from critical race theory

and US first-wave Black feminist critiques of White feminism’s racisms. Crenshaw (1989,

1991) applied the word intersectionality to express the specific marginalized and invisible social

locations of African American women based on race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality in

relation to not only violence against women, but also social and legal responses to violence

against women. In revisiting intersectionality, I hope to clarify key dimensions:

. An individual’s many identifications interlock so that one’s experiences of gender are

predicated upon one’s simultaneous experiences of gender identity, race, ethnicity,

economic and social class, sexuality, ability, nationality, and religion, for example.

. An individual’s identifications likely include privileges and oppressions interlocking

concurrently.

. There are important differences between avowed and ascribed identifications, which

trace power relations.

. There is multifaceted interaction among (a) the individual’s sense of self, (b) the indivi-

dual’s memberships with various social groups from household to community and cit-

izenship (e.g., local, virtual, and imagined), and (c) the individual’s systematic

conscription into the social order’s institutions.

. Extant categories of identification, such as gender and race, are constructed and

provisional, and therefore do not oblige between invisible, hybrid, mixed, liminal, and

interstitial positions.

. Labels within categories of identification, such as woman=man and gay=straight, tend to

default to positive=negative binaries and do not oblige between invisible, hybrid, mixed,

liminal, and interstitial positions.

. The dynamics of power may be specific and institutionally authorized and=or diffuse,

productive, and thus classically hegemonic.

. Intersectional analysis by definition engages in the work of social justice.

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 403

Additionally, I argue that identity and identities invite thinking that solidifies, reifies, and

essentializes notions of gender, race, ability, sexuality, and so on, as Fuss (1989) predicted. I

propose using the words identify and identification to encourage mindfulness of performativity

as doing, embodied enactment, in lieu of an essential and static state of being. Positionality refers to the situated intersectional individual or group indicating where individuals or groups

are located, in preference to who they are, within symbolic, social, and material systems and

institutions. Difference lies between individuals or groups, not within the Other, subordinated,

oppressed, marginalized, or (social or numerical) minority, which leaves the dominant,

privileged, mainstream, majority positionality unchallenged.

To complicate things, while advocating on behalf of ‘‘erased voices of the marginalized’’

(Kim & Dutta, 2009, p. 146), it is also important to reject deficit models. Oppressed, marginal,

or minority positionalities do not always lack power or resistance and are not necessarily experi-

enced negatively, instead of as sources of strength, empowerment, and pride. Then, too, there

remain those unrecognized interstitial positionalities, for example between man and woman. It

requires concentration to accommodate if not embrace both=and, complexity, and ambiguity.

Standpoint Theory

If intersectional identifications position us within social relations, then standpoint theory

explains a self-aware positionality. Early standpoint theory posited that members of the

oppressed group have an advantaged viewpoint by understanding the dominant and the sub-

ordinate groups’ sightlines on reality while the dominant group remains ignorant of all but

its own worldview; today standpoint theory asks people to be reflexive about their intersec-

tional positionalities and privileges within systems of knowledge and structures of power

(Allen, 2000; Collins, 1986, 1997; Harding, 1986, 1993, 1997, 2012; Hartsock, 1983b,

1983b, 1997, 1998; Pompper, 2007). Positionality may or may not predict awareness of privi-

lege or oppression—much less issue engagement or involvement. Beyond situational theory

(Aldoory & Sha, 2007; Grunig, 1989a, 1997; Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013), members of sub-

ordinate groups do not necessarily recognize their positionalities as oppressed, as the practice

of feminist consciousness-raising bears out. Nor do members of the privileged group generally

have an appreciation for their privilege to assume that theirs is the only reality. One achieves a

reflexive standpoint by conscious effort. From the positionalities of those ascribed as Other,

Dubois’ (1903) ‘‘double-consciousness’’ explains a standpoint that recognizes one’s own as

well as dominant perspectives. One also might distinguish between standpoints as strategies

for survival and even subtly subversive resistance within a hostile system and standpoints

as Sandoval’s (1991, 2000) self-aware oppositional consciousness engaged with transforming

the system.

Related to the intersectional analysis of publics, practitioners, and the people who consent to

participate in the research conducted by scholars, feminist standpoint epistemology reminds

scholars to be reflexive about their own positionalities and identifications as knowers and pro-

ducers of knowledge—not just public relations researchers and educators but practitioners, too.

Furthermore, in Western culture, the act of knowledge seeking, like the real world practice of

public relations, can take on the character and habits of imperialism, colonization, and

exploitation, particularly in light of a globalization that reads as neocolonialism.

404 GOLOMBISKY

Transnational Feminism, The Third Space, and Womanism

As intersectionality institutionalizes the scope of feminisms’ mandate beyond gender,

transnationalism also increases feminisms’ relevance in an era of global markets. Before closing,

I recommend transnational feminism, third space feminism, and womanist practices as examples

of expanding the theoretical repertoire for feminist public relations scholarship. Transnational,

third space, and womanist feminisms are compatible with performative intersectional identifica-

tions; they emerge from critiques of White Anglo heteronormative able-bodied middle-class US

feminisms; they privilege ‘‘Othered’’ identifications as integral to the politics of progressive

social transformation; yet they deny essentialist notions of identities. For public relations fem-

inists, transnational, third space, and womanist feminisms shift our social justice commitments

to different kinds of agendas; they make public relations answerable for its participation in neo-

liberal and neocolonial globalization; they foreground interstitial positionalities, practices, and

knowledges; and they give us tools for social justice interventions.

Transnational Feminism

As Bardhan (2013) described public relations practitioners’ uncritical enthusiasm for corpor-

atized globalization, Dingo (2012) described transnational feminism as providing the ‘‘political

edge’’ to globalization (p. 9). Transnational feminists scrutinize the human and environmental

consequences of flows of people, plants, animals, organisms, diseases, resources, waste, pollu-

tants, poverty, commerce, capital, culture, information, influence, jobs, production, goods, ser-

vices, etc., and nation=city-states across geopolitical borders, material, symbolic, and virtual.

Transnational feminism critiques neoliberal endorsement of globalizing capitalism, free markets,

and individual choice as the means for all people to achieve wealth, health, and happiness to the

extent that failure to thrive is framed as the fault of individuals, not systemic injustice or exploi-

tation. Neoliberalism shows up in not only for-profit, but also nonprofit, government, develop-

ment, and humanitarian discourses, policies, and practices, including those intended to benefit

women, and all of which are enabled by public relations. For example, the optimistic rhetoric

of microfinance disguises neoliberal values of personal responsibility and entrepreneurship as

social justice goals. Public relations may be unable or unwilling to divorce itself from neoliberal

corporatization; nevertheless, the critique must be lodged.

Transnational feminism is related to, but distinguishable from, global feminism promoting univer-

sal human rights, sometimes criticized as narrowly Eurocentric in definition and scope. Informing

transnational feminism, critics of global feminism include, among others, postcolonial, third world,

and indigenous feminisms. Building on Spivak’s (1988) call to include gender analysis in subaltern

studies, postcolonial feminism speaks from the unrecognized perspectives of formerly colonized

peoples, especially women, to name the cultural and financial imperialism of multinational corpora-

tions and international organizations as forms of neocolonialism. Viewing public relations through a

postcolonial feminist lens, Sison (2014) called on public relations to recognize its Western neocolo-

nial tendencies, seek out the invisible perspectives of marginalized peoples, and engage in the causes

of social justice. Distinguishable from postcolonial feminism, third world feminism

refers to the colonized, neocolonized or decolonized countries (of Asia, Africa, and Latin America)

whose economic and political structures have been deformed within the colonial process, and to

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 405

Black, Asian, Latino, and indigenous peoples in North America, Europe, and Australia. (Mohanty

et al., 1991, p. ix)

In answering the racism, ethnocentrism, classism, and heterosexism of first world feminisms,

third world and US third world feminisms also celebrate non-White women of color (Mohanty,

1988; Mohanty et al., 1991; Sandoval, 1991).

Using HIV=AIDS as an example, Chilisa (2012) described the well-funded West that exports

its own public health worldview and agenda to Africa to benefit the West, that treats African

women as a disposable Other whose bodies are targeted for drug trials never meant to benefit

them, and that engages in untested public health campaigns that fail because they do not address

the circumstances of African women’s lives. In contrast, indigenous feminisms, particular to the

conditions that produce them, honor local participation in governance, and work from local

knowledge systems, which can be incomprehensible to outsiders who don’t make the effort.

Making the effort might be a matter of life and death viewed in the context of the 2014 Ebola

epidemic in West Africa. Indigenous forms of feminism that diagnose and intervene in local

issues complement transnational feminism.

Furthermore, as Sandoval (1991, 2000) reminded people, the first world is the third world for

women of color and other disenfranchised groups. It is important to understand indigenous,

transnational, and third world feminisms as relevant at home, wherever ‘‘home’’ is, not imagined

faraway exotic locales. For example, race, ethnicity, and class complicated US women’s inter-

pretation’s of public health messages about breast cancer screening, which seemed to target

White women with access to healthcare, even though this group has the lowest risk

(Vardeman-Winter et al., 2014). Transnational feminism honors the local while monitoring glo-

bal trending and holds public relations responsible for its participation in neocolonial globaliza-

tion and Western White heteronormative able-bodied ideas about what counts as women’s

issues.

Third Space Feminism

If transnational feminism acquaints public relations with first-world biases, third space

feminism offers public relations a mechanism for pulling into relief lived human-scale interstitial

realities. Third space feminism prioritizes marginalized positionalities and ruptures dualisms by

a variety of embodied and rhetorical means (not the least of which is deploying the ordinal third

that preempts defaulting to unconscious dichotomies).6 Building on Anzaldúa’s (1987) queer

6In that sense, queering as a verb and trans-ing as Noble’s (2012) method are related, too. Queer theory, although not

strictly feminist, refuses norms, classification, and codification. Indeed, queer theory is a contradiction of terms. Here

queer is not about the identity politics of sexualities. Rather, queering requires active disordering of everything familiar,

such as unsettling pieties about public relations. Queering practices are exhaustive (and exhausting) processes of decon-

struction. Like queer theory, trans- as a method that destabilizes also not only exceeds its relationship with the politics of

sexualities, but also radically deconstructs. Noble (2102) argued that althoughqueering denies stable categories, trans-ing

flows around categories to accommodate excesses uncontained=able by commonsense categories, which gets back to

between, invisible, hybrid, mixed, liminal, and interstitial locations and positionalities. Derrida’s (1973) différance also

might be considered a related concept in the sense of proposing logics to deconstruct binaries; however, Sandoval (2000,

p. 46) noted that mainstream US feminism in the 1980s responded to the ‘‘theoretical problem’’ posed by US third world

feminism not by engaging with its critique, but by importing French feminism’s yearning for différance.

406 GOLOMBISKY

mixed-race woman in the borderlands, Sandoval’s (1991) third space interstitial oppositional

consciousness, and Pérez’s (1999) decolonial third space feminism, Chicana feminists have been

instrumental in developing third space feminism (Ba~nnuelos, 2006; Licona, 2005; Villenas, 2006).

The third space can be understood as interstitial social location and practice. As social

location, the third space reveals intangible, liminal, borderland, hybrid, mixed, migrant, and=or

or diasporic gaps in cataloging and categorizing people and their worlds. Life in third spaces, by

necessity, negotiates material and symbolic contradictions, ambiguities, and dilemmas posed

within particular political economies and social contexts. Such negotiations are not theoretically

abstract; they are born of necessity for surviving and thriving in seemingly impossible and

untenable positionalities (Ba~nnuelos, 2006; Khan, 1998; Pérez, 1999; Sandoval, 1991, 2000;

Villenas, 2006).

Third space agency communicates by way of mischievous, disobedient practices that resist,

disrupt, and displace authority, history, and canon (Ba~nnuelos, 2006; Bhabha, 1990; Khan, 1998;

Licona, 2005; Pérez, 1999; Villenas, 2006). Third space practices have the potential to be trans-

forming and emancipatory for individuals and groups. Pérez’s (1999) decolonial third space

feminism describes women whose political agency is circumscribed by, while also altering

and deflecting of, the arc of patriarchy. The third space as practice might explain the ‘‘paradoxi-

cal themes of ethnic solidarity worldview and acquiescence’’ described by African American

public relations professionals in Pompper’s (2004, p. 269) study. The third space also might

account for Latina public relations professionals negotiating the contradictions of their between and their among identifications, as well as their practices that both enable and resist oppressive

and discriminatory workplaces (Pompper, 2007). For public relations feminist theory, the third

space forces productively complex perspectives, voices, and alliances to generate startling

approaches, engage unregistered voices, and rally unexpected relationships.

Womanist Tactics

Some forms of feminist theory do seem to offer tactical, rather than ideological or philosophi-

cal, utility to public relations feminists. For example, Sandoval’s (2000, p. 51) ‘‘differential con-

sciousness,’’ described as ‘‘tactical subjectivity,’’ functions to mobilize alliances across feminist

topoi. Differential consciousness as praxis facilitates ‘‘affinities of attraction’’ that do not require

wholesale subscription or pledges of undying allegiance. For public relations, this is coalition

building for getting things done.

Honoring Walker’s (1983) Womanist politics and intended to be practical, Maparyan’s

(2012) ‘‘womanist change modalities’’ to ‘‘influence social and ecological transformation’’

(p. 51) read like a toolbox of feminist public relations tactics, including self-care, harmonizing

and coordinating, dialogue, hospitality, mutual aid and self-help, African models of mothering as

love and leadership, and physical and spiritual healing. She also described three other change

practices: siddon look, standing in, and the fly-over. ‘‘Siddon look,’’ about facilitating mediation

and arbitration, translates literally as ‘‘sit down and look,’’ a ‘‘belligerent pacifism’’ that forces

parties in escalating tension to stop and think (pp. 60–61). ‘‘Standing in,’’ or ‘‘creating the

migration without leaving,’’ is ‘‘a conscious decision’’ to continue to work for change from

the inside of ‘‘a putatively oppressive institution’’ (p. 70). The ‘‘fly-over’’ is a form of leader-

ship for ‘‘fast-tracking change’’ that refuses to continue the talking for the pleasure of talking but

instead gets on with the work (p. 74).

RENEWING THE COMMITMENTS OF FEMINIST PR THEORY 407

Transnational, third space, and womanist feminisms critique, theorize, and practice feminisms

differently in a world that has become communicatively global, corporately neocolonial, and

culturally diasporic. US public relations is not immune to such forces, as it exports around

the world its own vision of public relations as a field, set of professional practices, academic

discipline, and feminist agenda.7

CONCLUSION

Feminist scholarship flourishes in public relations. So do feminist theories of public relations,

whether empirical (Hon, 1995) or critical (Aldoory, 2005). Feminist public relations theory

has been especially invested in the study of women as practitioners, which, in turn, has lent itself

to something of a false dichotomy between thinking informed by liberal feminist women-in-the-

organization and radical feminist change-the-organization. Both to the discipline’s credit and

shame, critiques of this work as too narrowly focused on ‘‘the standard White women in public

relations’’ (Aldoory, 2001) began early but necessarily continue, from Kern-Foxworth (1989a,

1989b) to Pompper (2014). Intersectional analysis is a more recent development, as is feminist

theory applied to the study of publics (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, 2014). However, there

remains work to do examining compounding intersectional positionalities due to ethnicity, class,

age, ability, sexuality, gender identity, nationality, and religion. Furthermore, interstitiality and

the third space pose questions about the constructedness of such categories in the first place,

along with who is=is not interpellated through them. Feminist public relations theory is also well

qualified to ask transnational questions about the consequences of the discipline’s disposition to

privilege what is Western, European, first-world, US-centric, neoliberal, and neocolonial. Inter-

sectionality and transnationalism, developed by US and third world women of color feminisms,

represent the foundations of today’s academic feminisms (National Women’s Studies Associ-

ation, 2015). Intersectionality and transnationalism also represent opportunity for feminist public

relations theory with regard to advancing canon, curriculum, pedagogy, and, ultimately, practice.

My aim here is to expand the varieties of feminist thought nourishing public relations. I argue

that if practitioners embrace their communication savvy with regard to performativity, intersec-

tional identification, and social justice goals, then they improve not only their field, but also, by

their own mission, the worlds they live in. I have proposed that interpreting gender as performa-

tive, or something people do, is profoundly communicative; gender as performative reveals the

paradoxes of difference as communication problems and accommodates the body and agency

without resorting to biological determinism or cultural essentialism. Gender performativity

also reclaims the pivotal theoretical legacy of Lana Rakow as a communication feminist,

and performativity-as-communication accommodates intersectionality as identification and

interstitial location and practice.

7To be sure, I do not do justice to this work. Nor do I have the luxury here to cover the breadth of contemporary

feminisms underutilized in public relations. For example, what might one learn from Middle-Eastern, Arab, Muslim,

and Islamic feminist communication scholarship that assumes that women are expressive agents even activists in their

inhabited realities (Al-Mahadin, 2011; Eltantawy, 2013, Khamis, 2010)? Or, for instance, I submit that new material fem-

inism provides a transnational environmental perspective that avoids the essentialism problems of second-wave eco-fem-

inisms and also still works from feminist critiques of science without rejecting science. (See, for example, Alaimo &

Hekman, 2008; Barad, 2003; Frost, 2011; Grosz, 2004.).

408 GOLOMBISKY

Adjusting one’s feminist commitments in terms of social justice increases the theoretical,

philosophical, methodological, and tactical tools available to public relations feminists. In shift-

ing from equality to to social justice for, however, one’s definitions of social justice cannot be

nebulous if one wants to avoid being dismissed as blue sky. More than exposing European

notions of social and justice, sufficiently delimited operational definitions of social justice are

necessary for establishing and critiquing goals, not to mention gauging progress. This actually

might be a more difficult task than it appears.8 For the moment, however, I define social justice

as the sustainable material and social circumstances in which all people enjoy general wellbeing,

participate in self-determining communities, and thrive in the pursuit of fulfilling lives.

Finally, I urge public relations feminists to embrace social justice as communication acti-

vism—political, polyvocal, and transformative, per Wackwitz and Rakow (2007). This kind

of communication activism, although reflexive about standpoint and power relations, builds coa-

litions, something akin to Sandoval’s (2000, p. 57) ‘‘differential consciousness.’’ Similarly,

Maparyan (2012) wrote that womanist practices are ‘‘invitational rather than oppositional,

although they evince a certain feisty spiritedness’’ (p. 84). Whether individuals are scholars, tea-

chers, researchers, practitioners, or some combination thereof, they can think of what they do as

assembling collaborative alliances to effect social transformation. On balance, that is what prac-

titioners do in public relations anyway: engage voices, build relationships, and facilitate change.

In revisiting the impressive body of feminist scholarship in public relations, I hope to inspire

renewed commitments to feminist public relations theory not just for better public relations,

but for a better world as a result of public relations.

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