Papers & full reports
From the She Economy to Consumable Empowerment: Women’s Consumer Alienation on Digital Platforms
Xiaowei Feng, individual author. Accepted for Journal of Sociology and Ethnology on 27 October 2026. This is the available submitted manuscript; it is not presented as the journal’s published version.
More purchasing power, more freedom?
My paper asks how markets and platforms define the forms of independence women are encouraged to display. An expanding market can offer pleasure and opportunities while also attaching new expectations to appearance, confidence, and self-management.
Bringing different literatures together
I brought together work on consumer alienation, commodity feminism, postfeminist media culture, objectification, and digital platforms. I compared how these approaches explain advertising, appearance comparison, self-branding, and the pursuit of visibility.
The paper synthesizes existing scholarship; it does not report a new survey or experiment, or claim the exhaustive coverage of a systematic review.
Asking about conditions
How much room does a commercial environment leave for alternatives?
Who defines success or desirability?
Who carries the time, money, and emotional costs?
Does a consumer solution displace a question about institutions?
These are conditions for analysis, rather than a verdict that consumption is always empowering or always harmful.
Paper and next questions
From the She Economy to Consumable Empowerment: Women’s Consumer Alienation on Digital Platforms was accepted for publication in the Journal of Sociology and Ethnology by Clausius Scientific Press on 27 October 2026. This page records acceptance, rather than a confirmed published issue.
A next step would be to examine these conditions in specific platform settings, while distinguishing people’s own accounts from the interpretations researchers place on them.