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Book part
Publication date: 17 September 2021

Josephine Beoku-Betts

This chapter reviews developments in the intellectual and activist work of African feminists and gender scholars over the past two decades. African feminists and gender scholar…

Abstract

This chapter reviews developments in the intellectual and activist work of African feminists and gender scholars over the past two decades. African feminists and gender scholar activists have broken with dominant epistemologies to frame their own sites of knowledge production and feminist identity, reflecting shifting conditions in local and global contexts. The knowledge they generate is rooted in a tradition of scholarship, activism, and engagements with state institutions and with transnational and regional feminist movements. I discuss (1) contexts in which African feminist standpoints have emerged over the past 20 years, (2) developments in women and gender studies programs, and (3) ways in which African feminist scholars in the continent and diaspora have stimulated intellectual engagement and activism through feminist research and publishing, collaborative scholarship, influencing policy, and new forms of activism.

Details

Producing Inclusive Feminist Knowledge: Positionalities and Discourses in the Global South
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-171-6

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 June 2012

Regine Bendl and Angelika Schmidt

In this paper the authors aim to examine the forms in which feminist activism is played out at contemporary managerial universities and pose the following question: what notions…

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Abstract

Purpose

In this paper the authors aim to examine the forms in which feminist activism is played out at contemporary managerial universities and pose the following question: what notions of feminist activism and feminist theory have to be revisited in order to sustain the target of gender equality and support its move further into the centre and the mainstream of managerial universities?

Design/methodology/approach

Based on action research the authors document a workshop which they organised for different constituencies (administrators, researchers and feminist activists) working towards gender equality at an Austrian university and discuss its results in the context of feminist theory.

Findings

The five voices collected at the workshop show that feminist theories are still the underlying guiding principles for feminist activism towards gender equality at managerial universities. As this is the first time that different generations of feminist activists have been present at managerial universities and are working in a top‐down environment supported by administrators responsible for gender equality, common practices that have been successful to implement gender equality in the past have to be refined and new spaces for collaboration established.

Originality/value

This is the first paper that explores the multiple voices amongst those engaged in the process of transformation towards gender equality at contemporary managerial universities. It shows that an open discussion of complementary and conflicting ways in which the representatives can construct their selves, their strategies and their actions is required in order to start “managing the management” anew – from a higher level than the feminist grassroots activists in the 1980s and 1990s.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 31 no. 5/6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 September 2021

Akosua K. Darkwah

Since the advent of digital activism, a lot of scholarly attention has been paid to the use of the internet, especially in Africa, for effecting changes in authoritarian rule…

Abstract

Since the advent of digital activism, a lot of scholarly attention has been paid to the use of the internet, especially in Africa, for effecting changes in authoritarian rule. This chapter extends the work done by such scholars focusing on the work of African digital feminist activists, thus adding to the growing body of work on digital feminist activism. Drawing on interviews and analyses of digital material produced by four different feminist groups in Ghana, this chapter explores the variety of ideas that such digital feminists express, and the manner in which such ideas are received by the larger Ghanaian society. It argues that, indeed, digital feminists are making a positive impact on the larger Ghanaian society. While these digital feminists are subjected to cyberbullying, there are also many ways in which other individuals, both Ghanaian and otherwise are showing support for these women and their ideas. Increasingly, with particular reference to the newest of these groups, it is clear that they have institutional support for their views as evident in public and private organizations sanctioning employees or associates whose digital language they have critiqued. As with activism targeted at authoritarianism, digital activism targeted at patriarchy gets results, changing mindsets and penalizing sexist behaviors.

Details

Producing Inclusive Feminist Knowledge: Positionalities and Discourses in the Global South
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-171-6

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 August 2020

Claire Jin Deschner, Léa Dorion and Lidia Salvatori

This paper is a reflective piece on a PhD workshop on “feminist organising” organised in November 2017 by the three authors of this paper. Calls to resist the neoliberalisation of…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper is a reflective piece on a PhD workshop on “feminist organising” organised in November 2017 by the three authors of this paper. Calls to resist the neoliberalisation of academia through academic activism are gaining momentum. The authors’ take on academic activism builds on feminist thought and practice, a tradition that remains overlooked in contributions on resisting neoliberalisation in academia. Feminism has been long committed to highlighting the epistemic inequalities endured by women and marginalised people in academia. This study aims to draw on radical feminist perspectives and on the notion of prefigurative organising to rethink the topic of academic activism. How can feminist academic activism resist the neoliberal academia?

Design/methodology/approach

This study explores this question through a multi-vocal autoethnographic account of the event-organising process.

Findings

The production of feminist space within academia was shaped through material and epistemic tensions. The study critically reflects on the extent to which the event can be read as prefigurative feminist self-organising and as neoliberal academic career-focused self-organising. The study concludes that by creating a space for sisterhood and learning, the empowering potential of feminist organising is experienced.

Originality/value

The study shows both the difficulties and potentials for feminist organising within the university. The concept of “prefiguration” provides a theoretical framework enabling us to grasp the ongoing efforts on which feminist organising relies. It escapes a dichotomy between success and failure that fosters radical pessimism or optimism potentially hindering political action.

Book part
Publication date: 22 December 2017

Bernadette Barker-Plummer and David Barker-Plummer

This chapter analyzes #YesAllWomen, one of the largest, most visible, feminist Twitter events of recent years. Though hashtags and other forms of digital activism are not always…

Abstract

This chapter analyzes #YesAllWomen, one of the largest, most visible, feminist Twitter events of recent years. Though hashtags and other forms of digital activism are not always taken seriously as politics, in this project we investigate #YesAllWomen and its recirculation through media and public blogs, as an important instance of contemporary feminist discursive activism. Specifically, we argue that the hashtag functioned, first, as a site of collective identity for participants, and we describe some of the ways in which this identity building was achieved, and second, we argue that through its links to and recirculation by other platforms and media, #YesAllWomen also functioned as a public protest or agenda-building event with impact on public discourse beyond Twitter. Our project draws on content and discourse analysis methods to analyze the #YesAllWomen hashtag and to trace its interaction with other discourses such as news and blogs, including an automated content analysis of almost two million tweets and an analysis of a sample of 251 media and blog stories. We note that contemporary feminists are using digital media, in this case a Twitter hashtag, to achieve many of the same discursive goals of knowledge building and critique that have previously been achieved using other communications strategies such as consciousness-raising groups, publishing collectives, media strategies, and zaps.

Details

Social Movements and Media
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-098-3

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 17 September 2021

Abstract

Details

Producing Inclusive Feminist Knowledge: Positionalities and Discourses in the Global South
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-171-6

Book part
Publication date: 10 March 2010

Heather Laube

In the United States, rights-based laws have opened major social institutions to previously marginalized groups, altering the terrain on which social movements act, creating…

Abstract

In the United States, rights-based laws have opened major social institutions to previously marginalized groups, altering the terrain on which social movements act, creating opportunities for disruption, and expanding the forms protest takes. This research is an attempt to add to our understanding of contemporary protest. I use data from 50 open-ended, loosely structured interviews with women feminist PhD sociologists working at U.S. (and 1 Canadian) colleges and universities as a lens through which to examine contemporary protest. These in-depth interviews reveal that the demand-making and discursive protest of feminists in academia is rooted in the empowering intersections of their collective feminist identities and disrupts hegemonic practices in the academy and beyond. My findings indicate that social movement theory must move beyond restrictive notions of potential movement targets, activist locations, and strategies; and past narrow conceptualizations of collective action and movement goals.

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Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-036-1

Open Access

Abstract

Details

Online Anti-Rape Activism: Exploring the Politics of the Personal in the Age of Digital Media
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-442-7

Book part
Publication date: 14 November 2022

Gráinne McMahon

The young feminists in this chapter were part of several feminist groups in Manchester, analysed in this ethnographic case study as part of Manchester’s feminist movement. The…

Abstract

The young feminists in this chapter were part of several feminist groups in Manchester, analysed in this ethnographic case study as part of Manchester’s feminist movement. The young women described their motivations for ‘be(com)ing feminist’ as ‘personal-political’ and ‘political-personal’ journeys (Hanisch, 1970) that came about because of individual and group experiences of gendered disadvantage and a recognition that the needs of women, and women’s equality, would not be achieved in current political and democratic arrangements that favour a focus on the ‘common good’. While the young women campaigned for several causes (abortion rights, safer streets, sexual objectification, and so on), their frustrations with the mainstream neglect of women’s issues were the key drivers for self-organising for political action. The aim of their activism was to dismantle (or at the very least diminish) the patriarchal social order, and their participation and activism focused on women’s issues and rights and the need to create a ‘politics of difference’ (Young, 1990) that addresses their group needs, differences, and specificities.

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Reshaping Youth Participation: Manchester in a European Gaze
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-358-8

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Book part
Publication date: 2 July 2020

Nancy A. Wonders

This postscript highlights some of the most important feminist criminological contributions featured in this volume and considers their implications for future activism and social…

Abstract

This postscript highlights some of the most important feminist criminological contributions featured in this volume and considers their implications for future activism and social change efforts within the field of criminology – and beyond.

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The Emerald Handbook of Feminism, Criminology and Social Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-956-4

Keywords

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