GENMAC
June 27-28 2026

GENDERING TRADITION AND INNOVATION

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When viewed through a gender lens, traditions can reveal power relations, cultural expectations and market structures that shape how femininities, masculinities, and gender-diverse identities are produced, consumed, and transformed.

 

In contemporary consumer culture, tradition emerges in ways that are intimately tied to gender:

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• Practices and rituals – From domestic routines to ceremonial roles, gender often determines whose labour is visible, whose expertise is valued, and whose participation is expected. Whether in the choreography of a tea ceremony, the gendered division of festival work, or the craft traditions sustained across generations, these practices offer continuity, while also revealing inequalities and opportunities for reimagining gendered participation.

• Symbols and narratives – The stories, images, and cultural touchstones that make products meaningful frequently rely on gendered archetypes. Marketing reproduces and sometimes subverts these narratives, shaping how consumers identify with or resist gendered expectations embedded in tradition.

• Commodification and innovation – Markets continuously reinvent tradition, yet such reinventions often draw on gendered assumptions about authenticity, care, expertise, or empowerment, raising questions about who benefits from innovation and whose traditions are commercialized or erased.

• Resistance and revival – Around the world, individuals and communities mobilize tradition as a resource for gender expression. These acts of revival - whether feminist, queer, or intersectional - challenge dominant narratives and open space for alternative identities within and against established cultural forms.

 

Building on the theme of this year’s Consumer Culture Theory conference, ‘Tradition and Innovation,’ we invite scholars to ask how gender shapes the endurance, reinvention, and creative transformation of traditions. We also encourage reflection on how traditions can, in turn, influence gendered consumption, identity work, and market systems. By reflecting on how tradition and innovation shape gendered experiences in the marketplace, we can start to imagine possibilities for futures that are more inclusive, equitable, and imaginative.