Search results

1 – 10 of over 1000

Abstract

Details

The Stalled Revolution: Is Equality for Women an Impossible Dream?
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-602-0

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2023

Umaima Miraj

In this chapter, I uncover the jail diaries of a revolutionary woman of the 20th century Pakistan, Akhtar Baloch. Although feminism in Pakistan has oscillated between liberal and…

Abstract

In this chapter, I uncover the jail diaries of a revolutionary woman of the 20th century Pakistan, Akhtar Baloch. Although feminism in Pakistan has oscillated between liberal and postcolonial camps, through reading Akhtar's diaries, compiled as Prison Narratives (2017), I center Akhtar's own struggles for Sindh, along with the resistance of the women she met in the prison convicted for the murders of their husbands, to better theorize Marxist Feminism in Pakistan that overturns the structures that commodify women through love and revolution. My article will show the commodification of women's bodies; the “sale” of women through marriage as the goal of this commodification; the lovelessness and alienation women experience in commodified marriages; the unexpected fall in love with someone whom it is subversive for the commodified wife to love; the subversion of this unexpected event that leads to the attempted resolution of this tension through murder; the separation of the lovers through the incarceration of the woman by the capitalist-patriarchal state; and finally, the unexpected outcome (albeit the most common one) that the male lover abandons his female lover once she's jailed, but the defiantly brave female lover finds platonic love in jail through close female friendships with other women who are similarly brave in both love and in revolution. Through this exposition, I show that Akhtar's diaries provide a way for us to build on Marxist Feminist theory through a theory of love and revolution from a Sindhi feminist perspective.

Details

Marxist Thought in South Asia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-183-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1997

Gary L. Lemons

bell hooks says in “Reconstructing Black Masculinity” thatn[c]ollectively we can break the life threatening choke‐holdpatriarchal masculinity imposes on black men and create…

Abstract

bell hooks says in “Reconstructing Black Masculinity” that n[c]ollectively we can break the life threatening choke‐hold patriarchal masculinity imposes on black men and create life sustaining visions of a reconstructed black masculinity that can provide black men ways to save their lives and the lives of their brothers and sisters in struggle. Toward the work of political (re)unification of the genders in black communities today, black men must acknowledge and begin to confront the existence of sexism in black liberation struggle as one of the chief obstacles empeding its advancement. Making womanist space for black men to participate in allied relation to feminist movement to oppose the opression of women means black men going against the grain of the racist and sexist mythology of black manhood and masculinity in the U.S. Its underlying premise rooted in white supremacist patriarchal ideology continues to foster the idea that we pose a racial and sexual threat to American society such that our bodies exist to be feared, brutalized, imprisoned, annihilated‐made invisible.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 17 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Book part
Publication date: 24 August 2016

Elaheh Rostami-Povey

This chapter demonstrates that women challenge oppressive gender relations by engaging in active agency at different levels. Iranian women’s struggles for gender equality show a…

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter demonstrates that women challenge oppressive gender relations by engaging in active agency at different levels. Iranian women’s struggles for gender equality show a critical consciousness of the politics of local male domination and an indigenous contestation of the cultural practices which sanction injustices against women.

Design/methodology/approach

This chapter is based on the findings and analysis of the book, Women, Power and Politics in 21st Century in Iran. It is the result of the political and personal experiences of a number of Iranian women academics, journalist and activists who live and work in Iran.

Findings

Based on the updated findings and new statistical data, this chapter argues that women, despite their high level of education and activism, continue to face gender inequality, in particular in the sphere of employment.

Social implications

This chapter is intended to counter the often inaccurate and misleading impressions put forward by the media, politicians and some academics in the West when they talk about Iranian women. Within the broader feminist theoretical positioning, the aim of this chapter is to contribute to the debate on essentialism and the stereotype of Iranian women as submissive Muslim women without agency.

Originality/value

Feminist knowledge production is diverse. Nonetheless, consideration of the historical and geographical locations of feminist knowledge production is vital to our understanding of the complex processes of women’s liberation. Thus, Iranian women’s voices are important to what is traditionally understood as feminism.

Details

Gender and Race Matter: Global Perspectives on Being a Woman
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-037-4

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 November 2018

Amanda Elizabeth Vickery

The purpose of this paper is to explore the history of Black women as critical civic agents fighting for the recognition of their intersecting identities in multiple iterations of…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the history of Black women as critical civic agents fighting for the recognition of their intersecting identities in multiple iterations of the feminist movement.

Design/methodology/approach

Utilizing Black feminism and intersectionality I explore the many ways in which Black women have fought against multiple forms of oppression in the first, second and fourth wave feminist movement and organizations in order to fight for their rights as Black women citizens.

Findings

Black women in the past and present have exhibited agency by working within such multiple civil rights movements to change the conditions and carve out inclusive spaces by working across differences and forging multiracial coalitions.

Originality/value

This paper serves as a call to action for social studies classroom teachers and teacher educators to rethink how we remember and teach feminist movements. I also explore how we can use this past to understand and advance the conversation in this present iteration of the women’s movement to work across differences in solidarity toward equal justice for all.

Details

Social Studies Research and Practice, vol. 13 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1933-5415

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 7 November 2022

Ray Harris

In my preliminary thesis studies of social media, in the wake of the killings of women such as Natalie Connolly, there was a seeming widespread agreement, that if a man could get…

Abstract

In my preliminary thesis studies of social media, in the wake of the killings of women such as Natalie Connolly, there was a seeming widespread agreement, that if a man could get a relatively minor sentence for ending the life of a woman, using the purportedly ‘erotic’ context of the death as a legal means, then something in the judiciary was going wrong. Traditional feminists and many sex freedomists appeared to concur, in a rare moment of overlap on contemporary sexual ethics from these often scrummaging political groups. However, this ostensible concurring mystifies a more fundamental set of antagonisms that has plagued what we occasionally understand as the rhizomes of the ‘progressive left’, not least in the difficult relationship between political feminism and the sexual freedom movement, or indeed ‘sex positive feminism’. This latter ‘choice’ feminism seemingly elided with sexual freedom and jettisoned the hang ups of radical, Marxist and some branches of equality feminism, still persisting but indicative of what we broadly call ‘the second wave’. This elision between feminism and sexual freedom situates women as individuals with identities that signify an inexhaustible will, not as a casted and economized subjectivity embedded in a historical moment. This move sought to overcome the stalemate between sexual liberation, and women’s liberation. But did it? If we ask questions such as: what should legal practice and policy privilege in its functioning, the protection of individual sexual choices, or defence of the physical safety of women made vulnerable to violence by sexually oppressive cultures? – we may uncover the more profound ethical and epistemological contentions at stake. I want to frame the disputes between sexual freedomists and feminists that still persist, despite our contemporary liberal feminist vernacular, in relation to this theoretical shift in what is understood as ‘choice’, using the issues that satellite ‘the rough sex defence’ (BDSM, porn, violence, consent) in order to illuminate this tension. I want to use a materialist feminist analysis that retraces the concept of ‘choice’ in the feminist canon in order to analyse this elision in the context of the antagonisms between women’s liberation and sexual liberation. In tracing this ethical history I hope to contribute to an untangling of these unwieldy political notions in order to better confront the crystallized divisions in progressive sexual politics that contextualize the underlying disputes that frame the ‘the rough sex defence’. Doing so is necessary if we are to manage a more open, lucid conversation about what the role of the law is, or should be, in dealing with sex and violence in twenty-first century Britain.

Details

‘Rough Sex’ and the Criminal Law: Global Perspectives
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-928-7

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1983

Helen Rippier Wheeler

Five years ago a friend whose business has the word “women” in its title began referring to me requests she received for information about a large area encompassing women's

Abstract

Five years ago a friend whose business has the word “women” in its title began referring to me requests she received for information about a large area encompassing women's issues, herstory, Women Studies, feminism, nonsexist education, nontraditional employment, reentry persons, comparable worth, health, portrayal of women in literature, scientific developments by and affecting women, etc. They came from feminist and sexist people of all ages throughout the world. Most, however, were American women attempting to bridge the information gap and to counteract misinformation and lack of information about and affecting females. This eventually evolved into a non‐profit service through which I responded directly to inquiries.

Details

Collection Building, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0160-4953

Abstract

Details

The Stalled Revolution: Is Equality for Women an Impossible Dream?
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-602-0

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1990

Anne E. Zald and Cathy Seitz Whitaker

Despite the title of this bibliography, there was not a truly underground press in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase is amisnomer, reputedly coined on the…

Abstract

Despite the title of this bibliography, there was not a truly underground press in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase is amisnomer, reputedly coined on the spur of the moment in 1966 by Thomas Forcade when asked to describe the newly established news service, Underground Press Syndicate, of which he was an active member. The papers mentioned in this bibliography, except for the publications of the Weather Underground, were not published by secretive, covert organizations. Freedom of the press and of expression is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, although often only symbolically as the experience of the undergrounds will show, and most of the publications that fall into the “underground” described herein maintained public offices, contracted with commercial printers, and often used the U.S. Postal Service to distribute their publications.

Details

Reference Services Review, vol. 18 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0090-7324

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1992

Melba Jesudason

Over the last two decades, women's issues such as education, employment, pay equity, sexuality, lifestyle, housing, economics, environmental safety, health, child‐rearing…

Abstract

Over the last two decades, women's issues such as education, employment, pay equity, sexuality, lifestyle, housing, economics, environmental safety, health, child‐rearing practices, reproductive rights, military service, and criminal justice have become a major focus of public policy at every level. There has been equal interest about women of various ethnic backgrounds, women in other countries, and women's writing. There have been burgeoning social and political demands for research, scholarship, and activism on women‐related topics. To meet these demands, universities and colleges started interdisciplinary women's studies programs. Sheila Tobias, a leading scholar in the field of women's studies, defines it this way:

Details

Reference Services Review, vol. 20 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0090-7324

1 – 10 of over 1000