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

Abstract

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.

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