Gendered Consumer Responsibilization: The Constitution of Menopausal Women as Responsible Feminine Consumer Subjects

Abstract Recent decades have witnessed menopause, an inevitable and natural bodily transition, come under the purview of the market. Menopausal women are increasingly expected to be informed entrepreneurs of their bodies, bringing this transition within the domain of self-regulation and responsibility. Using data emanating from institutionalized market actors (i.e., pharmaceutical and insurance companies, healthcare professionals) and the accounts of consumers, we investigate the construction of responsibility in the contested field of menopause. We show that the formation of the responsible feminine consumer subject is an adjustive process generated through contestations between different articulations of subjectivity. Specifically, we identify three subject formative subprocesses and show how gender is implicated in each. Instead of following a singular path, these subprocesses culminate in two distinct yet coexisting routes to responsibilization, either by appealing to the qualities of traditional feminine subjectivity or by aligning with postfeminist subjectivity. We extend existing theorizations by revealing how gender shapes the processes of responsible subject formation and broadening the investigation of consumer responsibilization to a personal and embodied level.