There has been an impressive rise in multi-stakeholder initiatives to address social and environmental crises in which firms and other stakeholders promote ethical governance through standards. Habermasian deliberative democracy that provides a normative model for ethical governance, emphasizing dialogue and impartiality, has been particularly influential in developing social standards. However, feminist scholars take issue with some of its philosophical assumptions, and question its suitability particularly in contexts characterized by extreme inequalities. We use the feminist critique to understand some of the challenges involved in developing social standards based on deliberative democracy. Through an organizational ethnography of Fairtrade International, we examine multi-stakeholder processes in the development of a standardized “fair” minimum price for Rooibos farmers in post-apartheid South Africa. While fair trading was previously based on direct negotiations, the introduction of a standardized “f...