Intensive Motherhood And The Ideal Mother

Philanthrocapitalism is a novel type of philanthropy and involves donors who merge business goals with humanitarian acts (McGoey 2012). An example would be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a Global Health Program funding various types of activity such as research projects for malaria (McCoy, Kembhavi, Patel & Luintel, 2009).

As the term suggest, philanthrocapitalism includes philanthropy – a domain of altruism, and capitalism – a domain of being profit oriented which can be self-focused (McGoey 2012). Therefore, capitalism questions the true prosocial behaviour involved in philanthrocapitalism. The two contrasting definitions meshed together opens discussion for philanthrocapitalism as a conflicting development with inclusion of both advantages and disadvantages.

Philanthrocapitalism, with the enormous fiscal investments, means affordance of more tangible and intangible resources (Lorenzi & Hilton, 2011). Intuitively, more wealth increases accessibility to materials, manpower and advanced medical systems which are quantifiable and tangible in aiding global health. Additionally, more wealth gifts one with intangible power and influence in situations of decision making (Bishop & Green, 2015).

Furthermore, according to Bishop & Green (2010), philanthrocapitalists are liberated from obligations of a governmental role, which includes strain from elections or even dedication of time and means to achieve funding for societal needs. Emancipated, they have the capacity to invest in anything they deem fit, such as funding unconventional ideas which may present to be risky for the government board. This could potentially invite fresh ideas and successful strategies in managing global health.

However, philanthrocapitalism may promote inequality unintentionally. As mentioned, fiscal wealth ensuing from capitalism brings power in decision making, inevitably resulting in the masses perceiving the rich as unequalled than everyone else because of the authority they hold (Thorup, 2013). This creates competition, whereby donors could be in contention with the government about who should make judgment for global health investments. The poor becomes at the beck and call of the wealthy – the philanthrocapitalists.

The concern with such hierarchical competition lies with opposing desires of the governmental party who aims to improve health for the public whilst the corporate party aims to create a positive image to the public and also increase consumerism for profit gains which may not be entirely health promoting. In fact, the profit gains which could have originated from health-compromising products or activities may very well be the money invested in health-promoting ventures.

It is contradictory to see how philanthrocapitalism is the very phenomenon that may be causing added problems to global health, challenging the accountability of its overall social good (Weinryb, 2015). Moreover, inequality - a result of philanthrocapitalism, being used as a tool for legitimizing philanthrocapitalists’ charitable acts (Thorup, 2013) adds on to more contradictions.

Nevertheless, there are still advantages to this development, which should not be discounted. Instead, interventions and regulations can be considered to avoid the negative implications mentioned.