BRIDGING THE GAP - FEMINISM, FASHION AND CONSUMPTION

The article confronts two issues, first the question of women and cons umption and second the fashion industry as a feminized sector. In the first instance the argument is that recent scholarship on consumption has been weakened by an inattention to questions of exclusion from con sumption and the production of consumption. Income differentials as we ll as questions of poverty have dropped off the agenda in this debate. Attention instead has been paid to the meaning systems which come int o play around items of consumption. This has led to a sense of politic al complacency as though consumption is not a problem. For the many th ousands of women bringing up children at or below the poverty line it clearly is. The second part of the article takes the fashion industry as an example of a field where perspectives on both production and con sumption are rarely brought together. This produces a sense of politic al hopelessness in relation to improving its employment practices, esp ecially for very low paid women workers. The argument here is that gre ater integration and debate across the production and consumption divi de could conceivably result in policies which would make this sector w hose employees on a global basis are predominantly female, a better pl ace of work.