On 12 June 2026 the SLU in Uppsala, Sweden, will host the symposium “Women as active agents of change in agricultural value chains” as part of the UN International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026. Prof. Dr. Partzsch will present her paper It's a women's thing? Narratives in ethical trade campaigns. The full paper can be found here. Alin Kadfak and Francisco X Aguilar Cabezas from SLU will also speak. All information about the event can be found on the SLU homepage. Online participation via Zoom will be possible; the link will follow!

Partzsch, L. (2024). It’s a women’s thing? Narratives in ethical trade campaigns. Globalizations, 21(8), 1539–1555. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2024.2378549

"Narratives about women and girls are often used to illustrate abuses in global trade. The article begins by amending the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to include the agency of (women) characters and to take into account North–South asymmetries. The framework then serves to study NGO gender narratives in ethical trade campaigns, based on advocacy documents and semi-structured interviews on the recent campaigns for the European Union's new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). The results show that the successful campaigns have focused one-sidedly on women workers in the global South, portraying them as mere victims of corporate greed. NGOs diverted attention away from women’s responsibility as consumers and citizens for grievances in transnational supply chains. The solution presented by activists was consequently to demand gender-sensitive policy interventions from outside. Campaigns missed opportunities for narratives of women as agents of change and potential for mutual solidarity."