When men were served alcohol in cans bearing slogans such as “consent can’t come after you do” and “nipples are nipples” at a recent event in Adelaide, their reaction was as good as the brewers could have hoped for.
The nine women behind the start-up brewing company Sparkke Change Beverage Co aim to start conversations by wrapping political messages around drinks, then pouring them right into the masculine heartland of pubs, clubs and bars.
“We are disrupting and infiltrating the Aussie beer culture, which is a white, male-dominated space where there are a lot of decision makers,” says one of the co-owners of Sparkke, Sarah Barrable-Tishauer. The Canadian former actor provides marketing expertise to the Australian social enterprise.
Sparkke is one of a wave of social enterprises specifically aimed at empowering women. Whether it’s beer, fashion or fabric, these companies want to use business to start conversations around feminist issues.
For example, when the women behind Sparkke trialled their cider, beers and “hard lemonade” at the Beer & Bubbles laneway event in Adelaide in November, they found the men that crowded around the stand stayed to chat.
First, they were interested that the women serving were the owners and brewers. Head brewer Agi Gajic is one of only a few Australian female brewers aged under 30 and has previously worked with Sydney brewer Young Henrys.
Then the slogans on the cans got them talking.
“We actually had a lot of long conversations with people about the issues, especially about the fact that we were promoting a social agenda on beer cans,” says Barrable-Tishauer.
“The aim is to start conversations and create positive change for the issues that we are promoting on our cans. This hasn’t been a profit-driving business, as we are in the start-up mode … but, hopefully we can turn this into a full-time role for all of us,” she says.
Not everyone has appreciated the slogans. “There has been some criticism from people who feel that they don’t want to be preached at, when they are just trying to drink a beer, but enough is enough and it is not about sugar-coating issues to make people feel comfortable. It is actually about disrupting that space and using it as a tool to generate that conversation,” says Barrable-Tishauer.
“As we now live in a post-Trump, post-Brexit, post-Pauline Hanson world, it is really important that these issues are at the forefront and in bottle shops and in bars and in places where people are having important conversations.”
Sparkke is only just completing its first run of brewing and canning, having successfully raised $100,000 from a Pozible fundraiser in December.
People who participated in the Pozible campaign have voting rights to decide on future slogans. And with Sparkke donating 10% of sales towards the causes promoted on its cans, supporters get to vote on where those funds are directed.
The initial run of beverages is apple cider emblazoned with “consent can’t come after you do”; alcoholic ginger beer with “boundless plains to share” (a prompt on asylum seekers); pilsner with “change the date” (in support of Indigenous concerns about Australia Day); and alcoholic lemonade with “nipples are nipples” (in support of gender equality).
In February, they plan to launch a sparkling wine in aid of marriage equality.
The Sparkke team hope to create their own brewery co-op, but for now are operating out of a brewery at Willunga, in South Australia. According to Barrable-Tishauer, the products should be available online and in bars and some bottle shops .
Creating social enterprises can empower women in many different ways, says Carolyn Hardy, the chief executive of the charity Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia. Outside her full-time role at the charity for women suffering childbirth injuries, Hardy has set up an online business for women in the Pacific region.
Pacific Artisan launched in June as an online marketplace for crafts and jewellery for the women who were mostly selling their goods locally, or to haggling tourists off cruise ships.
A former senior adviser to the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women in New York, Hardy says she has witnessed the benefits that flow to communities when women are empowered through business.
“What I am trying to do is to open up a much bigger market where they can increase the volume of what they are selling, and sell it at a reasonable price,” she says.
“It will help them to sell more and provide a far more sustainable income. It should also be safer and it will be decent work.”
While Hardy’s aim is to empower women, she says the women she is supporting are unlikely to use the word “feminism” to describe what they are doing.
“For them, it is all about livelihood, survival, income for them and their children, and choices that come through financial independence.
“For most of them, their children have more opportunity and are more likely to be in school, they have more choices, they have a much bigger voice because, all of a sudden, they have much more economic parity with other people, with men in their villages and their husbands.”
Another online social enterprise with feminist aims is The Fabric Social, a fashion website that reinvests 5% of its revenue into the Asian communities producing its bags and garments.
It works specifically with women affected by armed conflict and makes a donation from every sale to the anti-landmine organisation APOPO. Every item sold results in one square metre of a mine field being cleared.
The business was launched two years ago by three Australian women who met while in New Delhi, India. They had been doing volunteer work, inspired by the gender rights and disarmament activist Binalakshmi Nepram.
The co-founder Sharna de Lacy says The Fabric Social has set up three manufacturing projects (two in India and one in Myanmar) and managed a turnover of up to $40,000 in 2016.
Fiona McAlpine, who is also a co-founder, says that while the financial results may not thrill an investor, the business is growing at a rate they are pleased with. “We do have grand plans,” she says.
De Lacy says feminism is at the heart of everything they do: “When we are looking for partners, we look for strong women-led organisations and we look for strong feminist leadership.”
