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Despite the existence of multiple living wage initiatives and methodologies for calculating a living wage, there has been limited improvement in increasing garment workers' incomes. This paper applies Iris Marion Young's responsibility for structural injustice theory to connect apparel brands and retailers as the actors with power, privilege and capacity to enact change to improve poverty wages. This paper critically analyses two living wage methodologies and three living wage initiatives, drawing upon Young's theory to understand why progress on living wage has stagnated. The analysis also considers whether gender has been incorporated, finding that most methodologies and initiatives fail to adequately embed gendered considerations. Findings reveal that the most powerful actors in apparel global values chains (brands and retailers) evade responsibility through performative membership with initiatives that prioritise profit, ignore gendered considerations and require minimum changes from businesses as usual.

This article establishes a new basis for examining the participation, mobilisation and impact of investors at a time when market-based activism for social change is rising in prominence. Existing terminology describing the expression of political values through investment decisions lacks conceptual clarity. Political participation by shareholders and other investors is variously described as shareholder activism or socially responsible investment, and currently conceptualised under the banner of political consumerism. However, this term fails to capture the unique political role and diverse actions of investors. We put forward 'political investorism' as a cohering term for investment-based political participation to remedy existing conceptual confusion, to distinguish between investors and consumers as political actors and to set an agenda for the future study of market-based activism. This article defines and develops the concept of political investorism, drawing upon illustrative cases from Australia to identify hallmarks, actors and tactics of this form of political participation.