Co-option or Recognition? Second-wave Feminist Politics and the Frigidaire Australia Women's Design Conference, 1980.

The article examines Frigidaire Australia's 1980 marketing campaign and subsequent Group 200 Women's Design Conference, which involved unpaid female consumers—primarily middle-aged homemakers—in providing feedback on refrigerator interior design, culminating in the 1981 release of the Frigidaire G2 model. While the campaign was promoted as a feminist-driven design collaboration, the women's actual influence on the product was limited to minor interior adjustments, with the broader process serving primarily as a marketing strategy that co-opted feminist identity politics amid emerging neoliberal economic practices. The case highlights tensions in second-wave feminist debates about domestic labor and design expertise, illustrating how women's domestic knowledge was both recognized and depoliticized within corporate agendas. Despite its limitations, the conference offered participating women a rare moment of agency and validation of their domestic expertise in the context of 1980s Australian social and gender norms.