The Ideal Woman- a case study of the Coca-Cola Company's 5by20 initiative.

Abstract: Since mid-2000s, a great emphasis of the global development agenda is directed toward women and their participation in society, especially as wageworkers and political actors. Hand-in-hand with this emphasis on women’s empowerment and gender equality as the ‘solution’ for development, the involvements of private actors in the development arena have increased as well. The notion of private corporation’s involvement in social issues and embracing some form of ethical dimension in their activities is not particularly new, but framing it as corporate social responsibility (CSR) is. The Coca-Cola Company, introduced in 2010, their latest CSR initiative called 5by20. This enterprise is a current example of the conceptual marriage of women’s economic empowerment and the business case for CSR. The aim of this study is to frame and shed light on this development debate in a more narrow setting than what current studies provide, and try to account for what happens to the image and perception of a woman from the Global South within the 5by20 initiative. Using a feminist historical materialist standpoint as theoretical backdrop, and conducting a contextual analysis of selected material from the 5by20, the study concludes that the issues of the current discourse is the de-politicized and ahistorical representation of women of which the 5by20 initiative could be considered to be a part of.