Search

The article focuses on the accomplishment of Cheryl and Nikki Bart, mother and daughter, of scaling the summit of Mt. Everest, which became a topic at the "Australia 2020 Summit." It provides the author's narrative and personal story of attending and participating in the said summit. It explores the way in which women were included in and excluded from the processes, content and discussions of the event, in the hope that the analysis may assist in formulating ways to enhance effective strategic thinking, policy development and service delivery which specifically addresses the needs of and opportunities for women in Australia over the next decade and beyond. Related issues are further duscussed.

Drawing on findings from 15 focus group interviews held with 65 young (aged 18–25) women university students in Turkey who describe themselves as feminists, this paper attempts to reconcile gender and youth studies and introduces social generation as a theoretical tool. The paper demonstrates how these feminist university students, as the members of a generation who had lived all their lives under the Justice and Development (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi- AKP) governments, articulated the difficulties of being young and a woman at a specific conjuncture in Turkey during which the gender regime has been going through a period of deterioration. They discussed their process of transition from childhood to youth, and expressed how in this process they became aware of a social gaze that repositioned them as 'young women' and thus forced them to face the social and political challenges of being a young woman at this specific conjuncture. Feminism did not only empower them to confront these challenges but also turned them into subjects of opposition in a political regime which had adopted an anti-gender agenda and which at the time of the research decided to withdraw from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women, also known as the Istanbul Convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how gendered spaces are configured within local socio-cultural systems of beliefs and in what way energy interacts with cultural constructions in an Indigenous village of the Brazilian Amazon. Particularly, this paper explores the perceived changes brought by fuel availability and affordability on gendered division of space and local cosmologies. Ethnographic techniques were adopted in the collection of primary data, particularly participant observation and in-depth interviews were best suited to understand the lived experiences of these changes. This paper found that access to cooking gas and fuel for transportation can partially shift pre-existing gendered spaces and, in turn, gendered practices. However, this shift does not challenge pre-existing hierarchies of power which still limit women's freedom of movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the call for papers by the journal "Feminist Economics" for its special issue on gender and international migration. This issue intends to motivate both research and action, generating a discussion on the ways in which gender is an important dimension from which general and specific migration issues can be analyzed. Themes include rethinking theory on labor and capital mobility, the care economy, women and migration, and the challenges of social protection for migrant workers.

The article calls for papers for the 18th Annual Conference of the Women's History Network at St. Hilda's College in Oxford, England from September 11-13, 2009. Papers are encouraged to focus on gender and institutional politics, women's movements and identity politics, and community and neighbourhood empowerment.

This paper explores the changes to art on artefacts attributed to females in the Late Nordic Bronze Age (ca. 1100–500 BC) from a gender critical, feminist perspective. Traditionally, Scandinavian research has focussed on the art of male artefacts, which is believed to represent a cosmological narrative, whilst female art has been considered devoid of cosmological motifs – concomitantly, it is often assumed that prominent social standing was reserved males. Through analytical discussion, the paper shows how the same motifs as are considered cosmological in male objects can be found on female objects, too, in compositions diverging from the male use, suggesting a gender differentiated use of art and association to cosmology. Through a gender theoretical lens, the paper explores what the social use of the art on these objects may suggest regarding identity and power relations in society, linking up with a reconfiguration of female identity at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will discuss whether the sport of netball has the potential to interpellate a feminine style of body comportment through its rules. Feminine body comportment is a term popularised by Young's essay 'Throwing Like a Girl' (2005) to indicate how women typically present their bodies when participating in sports. Research into the sport of netball remains relatively low in output, and a philosophical examination is a potentially novel approach. Firstly, this paper will give a brief historical overview of netball. Secondly, it will present a critical application of Young's theory of feminine body comportment and its application to netball. Thirdly, it will critically discuss Chisholm's (2008) refutation of and amendments to Young's feminine modalities, as well as their wider implications. Finally, it will conclude that netball has the possibility to interpellate femininity through 'negative' modalities, but that it also has the potential to provide a pathway for female transcendence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The British suffragettes are remembered for their dramatic and visually striking protests, such as their act of chaining themselves to public railings. However, this paper argues that the suffragettes’ protests were embodied acts of citizenship that disrupted the existing political order and laid claim to full participation in the Edwardian polis. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s work, this paper argues that Edwardian women used their embodied protests to lay claim to political space and stage a scene of ‘dissensus’ and rewrite the political common sense and gendered norms of political participation at the time. Extrapolating on Judith Butler’s performative theory of assembly and Rancière’s performative theory of rights, this paper frames the suffragettes’ protests as attempts to lay claim to political rights and citizen status through the enactment of these rights. In order to contest their gendered exclusion from the political realm, the suffragettes forcibly inserted themselves into masculinised political space through political techniques like heckling politicians, public speaking, and petitioning the king. Nonetheless, while the suffragettes actively laid claim to their own political rights, they also attempted to act for others, specifically other women who they saw as downtrodden, vulnerable, and oppressed. Although the suffragettes’ attempts to act for other women demonstrated a degree of gender-based solidarity, it also illuminated the complicated class politics of the movement, and the tensions inherent in laying claim to rights on behalf of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article ostensibly underscores the interpretation of gender, structural inequalities and violent identity-interplay in selected novels in Zimbabwe. It vigorously examines the effects of the state of disaster on Zimbabwean's post 2017 experience. A plethora of themes ranging from the entangled past, stunted memories of the present were exemplified in the article. The paper epitomises how trends in the novels emanate from African literature, with specific reference on the fictional writings in Zimbabwe delineating and it depicts social issues of both the past and present which have haunted Zimbabwean social constructs. After Zimbabwe's independence on 18 April 1980, Zimbabweans anticipated euphoria that independence would usher in the desired peace. The political ruling class from the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) promised a strong political framework and commitment to the course of women's liberation. The achieved independence did not bring about the anticipated freedom but promoted the dichotomy among women and men and also, that of Black and White that had earlier preoccupied the defunct Rhodesia. Relying mainly on female novel writers, the paper hinges on Tsitsi (1988) Nervous Conditions, Vera's (2002) The Stone Virgins and other works in passing to delineate trends in the constructions of characters' responses to identities created by masculine stereotypes. This article explores Butler's theory of performativity to argue that there is an ambiguous link between the past and present, the depiction of gender violence and structural inequalities in the postcolonial Zimbabwean literary space which were largely demonstrated in Zimbabwean novels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the intersection of culture, ethnicity, gender, and religion, this paper offers insights into the lived experiences of Nigerian women by adopting Nkomo and Ngambi’s multilevel framework on African women’s leadership to understand their work-family experiences in the Nigerian banking sector. Employing data from interviews with eleven Northern women and ten Southern women who live in the following states: Kano, Kaduna; Akure, Lagos, Ibadan; and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, the findings confirm the existence of patriarchal systems at the macro (social), meso (organizational), and micro (individual) levels of social action that shape Nigerian women’s work-family experiences. Nevertheless, as tradition and modernity interact to provide a hybrid social space within which these women negotiate the different levels, they demonstrated the ability to redefine femininity and womanhood and reject constraints that confine them. The women from both regions resisted conformity to the patriarchal systematic ideologies and cultural processes that placed them in a disadvantaged position. Despite social and cultural criticisms that restrict women’s movement and career options, their agency was evident in their narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For 49 years, the right to abortion was taken for granted—inhaled by every girl, every woman—by all people assigned female at birth in the United States. This right no longer exists. In 2022, with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the Supreme Court removed federal protection for the legal right to abortion and therefore women's agency over their bodies. This paper will contextualize abortion as part of a continuum that encompasses gender, motherhood and the meaning of reproduction and reproductive rights as sociocultural and intrapsychic phenomena. The expectation that mature female-bodied people are child-desiring women persists and is not conceptualized as optional. It is the original choice women do not have. The next choice women no longer have, if they become pregnant, is whether or not to continue a pregnancy. The Dobbs decision means the cultural reinstatement of female de-sexualization, along with the suffocating and silencing of agency—a negation of women's voices, desire, power and subjectivity—a recipe for psychological destabilization. Personal and clinical material will illustrate these points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presenting research findings outside of the form of a traditional research report requires different modes of making and communicating. This paper offers an account of how The #FEAS Report, a satirical news video, was made to communicate the findings from interviews and a survey as part of the mixed-methods study, Sexism, Higher Education, and COVID-19: The Australian Perspective to a wider public. Three creative tactics for research communication were used: DIY aesthetics, humour, and situated bodies. These communication tactics enabled the researchers to think differently about what research findings mean, and how to articulate them in ways that are intelligible. The paper shows how these tactics worked to bring findings to audiences beyond the academy and ask audiences within the academy to think differently about research reporting and knowledge communication. The paper considers how performing research in this way generates different conversations that compliment those started by more common ways of presenting research findings, and most importantly, how crucial it is for feminist researchers to make space for the creative within contemporary higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on teaching a postgraduate degree which aims to support students to understand and challenge gender violence and contribute to gender justice. It explores three dilemmas: (i) epistemological – how to create a curriculum which embraces diverse knowledges and decentres perspectives which can produce violence; (ii) pedagogical – how to create a learning space which generates intersectional gender justice; (iii) ethical – how to engage with violence suffered by others – and selves – without propagating further harm. Exploring how the author navigates these dilemmas, the paper argues that teaching this degree entails more than developing students' theoretical knowledge and critical analysis skills. It requires providing opportunities for students to contribute to the degree and supporting them to build skills in self-reflection, empathetic communication and collective witnessing. It means making space for students to work through precarious moments and process their own encounters with gender injustice and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the claim in Miroslav Imbrišević's paper about differences between the positions of Jon Pike and myself, there are also significant overlaps. I endorsed the WR consultative process that Jon was part of, agreed that Jon had produced a compelling argument, and agreed with the lexical framework of the argument. Miroslav's major contentions with my argument appears to be that it dresses up patriarchal outcomes in feminist clothes, and that it ignores the voices of women [athletes] in coming to its conclusions. In this paper, I address the charges by suggesting that both emanate from Miroslav's attempts to see gender critical feminism as the gauge against which all positions need to be judged. My position is that this school of feminism will lead to largely conservative outcomes in the discursive and organizational hierarchies in sport, so that any individual benefits that accrue to female athletes will be less substantial than the loss of transformational potential in women's sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marxism-feminism is a vital field with diverse voices and different political agendas for social justice, from the defense of land and water to the reorganization of production. The anthology Marxist-Feminist Theories and Struggles Today aims to grasp the originality and relevance of that tradition. The book represents a variety of contributions, defined as Marxist feminist by their authors, who presented papers at the Marxist Feminist Congress in Vienna in 2016. This was the second International Marxist Feminist Conference, the first having been initiated by the feminist section of the Berlin Institute of Critical Theory. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks and practices of Marxist feminism, the edited anthology provides an invitation to converse about our understanding and practice of engaging gendered, racialized heterocapitalism for a better global future. This book symposium and its reviewers demonstrate the richness of the resulting conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the approach taken by World Rugby to address the question of trans women participation in women's rugby and the paper by Jon Pike that explains the ethical justification for the exclusion of trans women players from world rugby are compelling when understood within the dominant rugby/sport narrative. However, in this article, I suggest that what is absent is a radical feminist understanding that engages with the political purposes of separate sport spaces for women in producing feminist counternarratives that challenge men's power in/over sport. Decisions about the inclusion of trans women in women's sporting competitions should be made on a sport context-by-sport context basis oriented by broader feminist political goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes representations of Simone Biles in media coverage of two major gymnastics events in 2019. It asks which, if any, gendered and racial stereotypes identified in previous scholarship about media coverage of Black and women athletes are also present in coverage of Biles. It also interrogates in what ways these stereotypes intersect as distinct forms of representation of Biles as a Black woman. Employing the tenets of feminist theory and Black feminist thought through an intersectional lens, a qualitative textual analysis of 34 articles revealed that both gendered and racial stereotypes were present in coverage of Biles. The most prominent stereotypes include feminized emotions, lack of mental fortitude, negative attitudes, and physicality. These intersecting representations underscore the persistence of these stereotypes in contemporary discourse. This paper contributes to, and advances, the literature on media representations of women athletes, Black athletes, and Black women athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between language, identity, religion, and gender through a study of discursive identity construction among non-veiled Muslim women in Malaysia. Informed by Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA), this paper further explores the ways through which these women attempt to negotiate and/or subvert their positions of powerful and powerless within interrelated religious and gendered Discourses, which are collectively grouped under the 'Discourses of non-veiling'. As the veil is regarded as an important signifier of a Muslim woman's identity, the discussions revolving around this symbolic piece of clothing and the identity of the wearer elicits responses that showcase a diversity of perspectives. By utilising a discursive and linguistic lens, this study therefore seeks to contribute to the emerging body of work on language, religion, and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the topic of anti-feminist, anti-gender backlash in contemporary Italy in three steps. Firstly, it reviews some recent research examining the various ramifications of anti-feminist and anti-gender discourse in the Italian context. The role that the Catholic Church has played in championing the crusade against gender, most visibly by fabricating the so-called ideologia del gender (gender ideology), is addressed extensively together with the analysis of a cluster of heterogeneous men's groups involved in backlash efforts to endorse and spread anti-feminist sentiments. The focus then shifts to younger generations' struggles with making sense of and negotiating their own gendered presence in the twenty-first century Italian postfeminist context. Finally, by directing attention to the still precarious and marginal status of Gender Studies as a disciplinary field in Italian academia, the paper seeks to re-assert the relevance of Gender Studies, and to enliven the debate on the full academic institutionalisation of the field in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Matsuda Aoko's production, conventional feminist themes – such as gender roles, women and the working environment, marriage and maternity – merge with more contemporary topics linked to gender identity, sex and sexuality. The subjectivities that emerge from this scenario are often young characters (especially people in their thirties or forties, but also younger individuals), looking and fighting for their place in society. What comes to the fore is the evident need for the subjects to set themselves free from established roles and focus on what they wish to become, leaving societal constrictions aside. In this paper I focus on the novella 'Sutakkingu kanō', one of the most representative works by the author, and analyze its theoretical impact. I examine to what extent it challenges gender normativity and I reflect on the preponderant use of repetition in Matsuda's style and its different outcomes. I also show how her works, which are generally focused on women's characters, in reality defy the male-female dichotomy and reveal an urge for men too to set themselves free from established roles. By doing so, I aim to point out the impact of the great contemporary relevance of Matsuda's works, which is arguably the reason behind her recent success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of the Australian Football League Women's (AFLW) combined with the introduction of grassroots women's Australian football across the country have challenged the landscape of Australian sport and sport media in recent years. Many young women and gender diverse people have had the opportunity to participate in contact sports such as Australian football for the first time. With this, has come exposure to off-field spaces and cultures that they have previously been excluded from, such as post-sport pub culture and locker rooms. Through qualitative interviews with grassroots players in the Hunter Region, this paper explores how spaces can encourage and provide the opportunity for women to challenge binary expectations through comradery and acceptance of masculine bodily displays in conjunction with the normalization of non-heterosexuality. We conceptualize the 'sport-sexuality-assemblage' as a way of accounting for the relations of desire for women and gender diverse people in a range of sport spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the anti-extradition bill movement in Hong Kong, this paper employs the concepts of doing and undoing gender to investigate the barriers that female frontline protesters encountered and the strategies they adopted. It shows that stereotypes linking high-risk activism and physical prowess with masculinity, the association of the frontline with high risks of arrest and injuries, and physical confrontation with the police meant that the frontline was marked discursively as a male domain. However, the leaderless characteristic of the movement facilitated women crossing this discursively marked gender boundary. Once on the frontline, women took different paths. Some began to do gender by taking on tasks that were considered less risky and more compatible with femininity because of the gendered interactions amongst protesters. On the other hand, women with experience, and access to social support and mentorship gained the confidence they needed to take on tasks that were seen as 'masculine', and thus undoing the gender stereotype that women lacked the capacity for frontline protest. The findings illustrate the continuous challenge women face as they are held accountable for their gender in social movements. At the same time, they also suggest that women's doing of gender in social movements is not inevitable, but contingent on social contexts and interactions. Certain factors such as the leaderless characteristic of a movement and peer support and mentorship can facilitate gender boundary crossing and neutralize gendered interactions. These, in turn, allow gender to be undone in social movements and promote women's participation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2014, several European Union (EU) member states have adopted their own versions of "Feminist Foreign Policy" (FFP). Increasingly, feminist bureaucrats, politicians, activists and scholars are calling for the EU to do the same. This article scrutinises claims to the feminist actorsness of the EU by introducing the analytical concept of Feminist Power Europe (FPE). In employing FPE the article examines whether the EU can adopt a FFP that upholds transformative potential of feminism. Undertaking critical content analysis of key documents, we identify three overarching feminist frames that emerge in the EU's external policies: (1) Liberal; (2) Intersectional; (3) Postcolonial. We demonstrate that the EU's propensity for a transformative feminist foreign policy is limited by the setup of global politics and the main drivers of European integration, which continue to be situated in a traditionally masculine environment and are defined by prevailing hierarchies. In undertaking this work, we highlight the constraints of advocating for the EU to adopt a FFP. This paper concludes by cautioning against the uncritical deployment of "feminism" in foreign policy articulation within an FPE configuration that excludes reflexivity about the EU's external relations vision and indeed, its practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invoking the spirit of Muriel Dimen's early queering of psychoanalytic writing, the author sandwiches – between echoes of Dimen's 1991 paper on deconstructing (gender) difference and Judith Butler's (contemporaneous) 1990 gender-deconstructing masterpiece "Gender Trouble" – a recent, excerpted dialogue among five female-born queers who serrendipitously helped each other flesh out how their 20th century woman-centered feminist values (still!) critically anchor and enliven their 21st century trans*/gender-queer lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender hierarchy and inequality are attributes of Western colonialism enforced in several colonised societies. Similarly, feminism (Western), as the antithesis of European sexism, has permeated colonised societies and has been assimilated without proper reflection. This is concretely evident among the Yorùbá people of south-western Nigeria. Before European colonisation, Yorùbá culture was gender-neutral and gender-silent; women were seen as complementary and not subordinate to men. Hence, according to Oyěwùmí's work on The Invention of Women, caution and reflections must be raised on the continual adoption of mainstream Western feminist philosophy in Yorùbá culture. In essence, the colonial imposition of the Western gender binary in Yorùbá society and women's anti-colonial and feminist activities are discussed. Furthermore, the paper challenges some feminist approaches and ideologies in Nigeria, while advocating for a communal, transformative, and Pan-African feminism in Yorùbá and African societies. The decolonisation of Africa and the Yorùbá education system are recommended, alongside a proper history of Indigenous Yoruba people and knowledges. Contemporary feminist campaigns (including digital feminisms) and movements must also develop a 'shared text of blackness'. The duo should align and improve the worth of women based on the indispensability and esteemed status offered to women in 'pre-colonial' Yorùbá society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the history of Sikh feminist thought and practice as envisioned by the founder of the Sikh faith, Guru Nanak. We contextualise the historical significance of the time Guru Nanak lived in and that of his profound feminist thought. By citing recent case studies and controversies including the 2015 preacher Hari Singh Randhawa Wale at Dukh Nivaran Gurdwara in British Columbia, Canada and the active prohibition for females gaining access to perform kirtan at Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, we argue that Guru Ji's 'radical' feminist philosophies have not been understood or realised in practice to their fullest capacity within the Sikh faith. We connect this to an overall lack of opportunity for representation of women within the diasporic gurdwara spaces for faith maintenance and questioning. We include in this paper an overall argument for the need to push boundaries and interpretations by using Sikh feminist thought within Sikh vichaar and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban food policies are increasingly considered central instruments for the promotion of food systems sustainability. As for their social sustainability, justice and equity are expected to play a central role, but gender equity remains not fully developed. In order to explore how gender relations can be addressed in the context of urban food policies in global North settings, in this paper we analyze the drafting process of the Urban Food Strategy of Zaragoza (Spain), self-identified as agroecology-oriented and which aimed at introducing a gender-sensitive approach. Based on empirical insights from this case study, we show that a lack of reflection and empirical development exists on the food policy-gender equity nexus, while at the same time there is an emergent body of specific proposals to be obtained from feminist and agroecological reflections on urban lifestyles. Indeed, our paper shows that agroecological and feminist approaches converge in claiming for the visibilization of food-related care work, and in its de-privatization through community-based infrastructures. The paper also unveils limiting conditions which may hinder the transformative potential of agroecology and feminism in urban food policy co-production processes, such as top-down approaches to food policy production, weak participatory processes, and gender-blind decisions among city officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite ongoing attempts to disrupt the white cis-hetero-masculine nature of the literary canon the secondary school English curriculum remains tethered to its lineage. In conversation with feminist new materialist scholars who argue that the stories we read and write have material affects on who we are becoming, this paper argues that in order to mobilise change in the secondary years of schooling, interventions into the canon must move beyond (re)forming text lists or providing teachers with readymade pedagogical resources. Drawing on the Australian context, the authors outline some of the contemporary challenges teachers face in diversifying and decolonising the curriculum. Drawing on their Literary Linking Methodology the authors discuss a pilot project that seeks to unsettle the canon by supporting teachers to undertake extended immersion with both contemporary literary texts and archival research. Accordingly, this paper contributes to understandings of the tensions and challenges teachers face in introducing contemporary Australian texts into the curriculum and offers insights into the ways in which professional learning might be (re)imagined so that English teachers might draw on available cultural resources as researchers and literary knowledge producers in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to understand the negative connotations of amalungelo – women's rights – within the domain of African vernacular. We attempt to unpack the ways in which amalungelo are invalidated by neo-traditionalist discourse, and how the invalidation of amalungelo often occurs within the domains of African language and African traditions. We embrace a notion of African identity and culture to which we belong, and also unpack some of the contradictions this presents in the form of new traditionalisms (neo-traditionalism) that form and reform to justify patriarchy in modern Africa. Through conversation we search for a textured sense of the matricentric as offered by language and idiom, in the effort to further contribute to the ongoing work of building an African feminism. The paper sees itself as a non-linear exploration of ideas, with no pretentions to finding a concrete set of appropriate concepts for the ongoing search for women's equality in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities have long become interspaces, entangled in materialities and virtual worlds. However, as urban automation advances in cities increasingly made 'smarter', everyday processes are often controlled by oppressive standards hardcoded into technologies. Publicly neutralized as 'objective', corporately owned algorithmic architectures now function as urban gatekeepers. They determine social participation, possibilities of space appropriation on- and offline, and access to (social) infrastructures. Following five months of qualitative research on hacking and other tech-practices by German-speaking cyberfeminist collectives in 2021, my paper portrays their refusal of black-boxed, profitable, and biased technologies of classification. I argue that feminist hackspaces are important urban co-creators in digitized cities to come. They offer infrastructures to increase access to interfaces, (cyber-)spaces, and decision-making processes by sharing their tech-knowledge and tools. Their activism demonstrates how (urban) hacking is a crucial practice to break with non-democratically controlled digitalization processes: in favour of a city for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to add to the underrepresented scholarship on feminist critique in Taiwanese cinema by investigating the ways in which female power has been represented in the female-centred Taiwanese film, The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful (BCB). Through a postfeminist reading, this study attempts to challenge the dichotomy of Asian versus Western values in order to engage Taiwanese films into the global debate of feminism. By revealing the problematization of representations of the seemingly powerful female characters in BCB produced by male filmmakers, we unveil the hidden contradiction of feminism and anti-feminism in order to gain a profound understanding of women's power relations and the socio-cultural perception of them in the Taiwanese context. We categorise the three leading female characters into significations of "dominant feminism", "passive feminism", and "recessive feminism", and show how their power is exercised through scheming, seduction and detainment, respectively. Therefore, we argue that these seemingly powerful female images in BCB are all represented as stigmatic which attempts to equalize female power to negativity thereby essentially disavowing feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media reports of female American football coaches frequently laud them as being the "first," a demonstrable indication of the lack of awareness of the long history of women in this role. This paper utilises feminist media theory to examine the language of newspaper coverage of female American football coaches from 1908 to 1960. The article identifies 26 female coaches; newspapers stated that eight of these women were the first-ever, and one was the state's first. In all cases, the newspapers were inaccurate. The analysis demonstrates that newspaper reports sometimes emphasised women's domestic roles and their desirable femininity and heterosexuality. While some journalists were horrified, most were not; many women found widespread support for their role, especially when schools employed them due to the absence of men during wartime. The lack of outrage about women's involvement in a sport (and role) strongly aligned with masculinity is significant and demonstrates that women have found acceptance in the sport for far longer than academics have previously explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the rise of fertility apps and what data-sharing in this arena can mean for app users. The paper offers a brief background of some available fertility apps, how they work and where they are situated in the sphere of health-tracking apps. Exploring how exactly these apps market themselves in terms of feminist-empowerment discourses, the author examines how these claims fit within broader critical discussions around fertility data, data sharing and the ways that applications and algorithms are designed to configure particular versions of reproductive femininity. The author shows the way that intimate data takes on a new life as it is sold on in order to identify women as potential targets for purposes of commercial marketing, as well as the more subtle ways this works to remind female users of reproductive expectations within societies. The paper illustrates the way that fertility apps can play a role in the further medicalization and regulation of the female body as a newly-digitalized reproductive machine, as these apps become a new mode of inducing conception under a veiled guise of appearing to be a harmless and empowering way for women to re-learn and re-claim their bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how nursing education both exemplifies the contradictions of neoliberalism alongside its seemingly all-encompassing influence. We conduct a feminist critical policy analysis to trace the histories of nursing as a feminised vocation located outside the academy, and how this is reflected in recent policy. We then critically explore widening participation and social mobility in relation to nursing education, and demonstrate how a discourse of fairness is used to justify market solutions. The 'special case' of nursing is considered through an analysis of how 'the nurse' as subject is constituted in education policy discourse. Our discussion focuses on the effects of these reforms and demonstrates how historical discourses that centre on women as carers are assimilated into the 'neoliberal social imaginary'. The paper's scope is both local – the gendered history of nursing education in England – and global – the force of neoliberal globalisation in education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the challenges of the political narratives and discourse of, what we would and some scholars have argued as, Islamic feminism in contemporary Iran. The paper explains briefly the social origins and accompanying intellectual and political developments that led to the emergence and shaped the political narratives in Iranian Islamic feminism. Next, it outlines and discusses the nature and characteristics of the Islamic feminist discourse. In doing so, the paper highlights and explains the central intellectual and ethical-political principles deliberated and advocated by several writers and thinkers within and related to this discourse and women's discourse in general, including Ali Shariati, as well as Murtada Mutahhari whose views on women and gender inform mainstream perspectives on the status and role of women in Iranian society. The paper then examines the challenges confronted by the discourse of Islamic feminism and concludes by considering the implications of Islamic feminist narratives and discourse on contemporary Iranian thought and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'intersectionality' is usually attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar, who coined the term in 1989. In this paper, we reflect on how the concept has travelled through both space and time. We trace the longer history and more complex geography of intersectional approaches rooted in grassroots women's movements in the Global South, where radical claims were made against the dominance of white, middle-class women's analysis of the situation of women in the world. These, together with the Black women's movement in the US, paved the way for the emergence and coining of the term intersectionality. We then reflect on how the concept travelled in three domains of migration-related knowledge: academic research, international policy and advocacy politics. We find that, while some academic research is true to the original politics of intersectionality, there is also some research that has strayed much further away from the original aims of intersectionality, to the extent that we would question whether it can be called intersectional at all. In international policy, we find that the original radicalism of the term has been watered down in the translation of the term into policy targets and measurements. Finally, in advocacy politics we find the greatest continuity with the original aims of the term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media has become an almost ubiquitous method of communication and engagement, not only in the information sector but right across the increasingly digitalized world. Likewise, it has played a large role in the development of fourth-wave feminism and in movements such as #YesAllWomen, #FreeTheNipple and #MeToo, as well as in calls for improvements to the representation of gender in media. This paper draws together both aspects in order to critique and reflect upon the current usage of social media as it pertains to the representation of gender in UK university libraries, archives and special collections. It explores the challenges of utilizing such media for academic institutions deeply rooted in discourses of authority and heteronormative patriarchal power. It uses a sample of social media posts to foreground and examine a number of successes and shortcomings, with discussions informed by critical theory. In particular, foundational texts of feminist theory, such as Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) and Black Looks: Race And Representation (1992) by bell hooks, are used to frame explorations of gender and intersectionality in university collections; ultimately seeking to discover how information professionals may better represent the diverse nature of their collections on social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superhero comics books' reliance on revision has been discussed but the role of gender in relation to these concepts in such comics is yet to be explored. This paper examines the first story arc of Kelly Sue DeConnick's acclaimed comic book series Captain Marvel (2012) through the interrogative lens of postfeminist culture, considering how past and present collided within the relaunching of the popular Marvel comics superheroine Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) into Captain Marvel. Simultaneously a postmodern pastiche and a contemporary mediation of popular feminism, the story takes Danvers back, via time travel, to periods before the western second-wave feminist movement took hold. The article thus considers how this Captain Marvel storyline engages with contemporary feminist issues such as the proliferation of female superheroes in Marvel comics as well as the retroactive insertion of feminist discourses into an ostensibly prefeminist setting, questioning what, if any, radical interventions in dominant modes of women's representations in superhero narratives these stories might offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding and defending women's rights and eradicating women's oppression have become key to La Via Campesina and its conceptualization and practice of food sovereignty. In this paper, we analyze how gender equality and feminism have gained momentum within the movement, and how the work on gender issues configures a feminist politics and praxis at the global level. As LVC celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, we examine what difference women's decades-long struggles have made within the movement, especially since 1996, and how these have shaped the movement's politics, both organizationally and politically. We argue that women's activism has contributed to radicalizing food sovereignty with a feminist perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This Viewpoint considers the rise of lads' mags and wider lad culture between 1996–2006 as a historically illuminating period that marked a shift in societal perceptions of gender equality and contributed towards a hostile perception of feminism. Themes of pornification, hypersexualisation and postfeminsim are explored within the context of recent debates on the representation of gender and sexuality in British popular culture. The key issue emerging from this analysis is that there has been a rebranding of sexism through a postfeminist discourse, referred to in this paper as the 'postfeminist masquerade', which has resulted in a wider politicisation of feminism concerned with representations of the female body. This politicisation has eroded debates on gender representation into a reductive binary, the 'exploitative-liberating dichotomy', and has consequently delimited contemporary engagements with feminism. Lads' mags and wider lad culture are thus analysed as having perpetuated this binary and serve as a historical symbol of how the state of gender relations have been subjected to contestation amongst feminist activists, media commentators and academics since the turn of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Raja Alem's Sufi-oriented Islamic feminism is the fruit of the sociocultural atmosphere of Mecca; a city that contains Islam's holiest mosques, as well as Alem's own home, and is the main site of her feminist battles. In Alem's novels, her feminist discourse is interwoven with an epistemological one that locates women's religious agency within the confines of spiritual knowledge. Alem's My Thousand and One Nights sheds light on the way Sufi patriarchs exert power over the mystical in order to manipulate women's religiosity. This sets her apart from other Islamic feminists such as Saba Mahmood, who attempts to address the issue of gendered measures of religious agency by adhering to literal readings of sacred texts. Furthermore, this paper studies Alem's reference to spiritual knowledge as a resource for women's religious agency. This paper highlights Alem's belief that even though women's knowledge is acquired through inheritance rather than individual motivation, spiritual knowledge is the only way to combat the social hierarchy over the mystical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1880s, educators at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania codified American football, and the sport became popular on the campuses of both universities and high schools. Contrary to popular belief, it was not just male students who turned to football. Between 1890 and 1912, girls and women around the country began to play the hyper-masculine sport even as it gained notoriety for its violence and associated deaths. This paper analyses contemporary newspaper reports and explores women's attempts to play the American code. The paper argues that women played the game despite football's strong links with masculinity, although feminine ideals of the time constrained their participation. This paper also posits that women from all classes played this physical and dangerous sport, contradicting conventional wisdom regarding the sporting activities of middle- and upper-class women. It demonstrates that in some cases women played against male opposition, something noted football historian Michael Oriard stated was 'potentially more disruptive' to the masculine narrative of football. The paper demonstrates that media coverage was essentially accepting of these young women and explores the reasons for this positive reaction at a time when football was a site for men to prove their masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The campaign for women's access to higher education in Ireland in the late-nineteenth century was understated, characterised by committees, middle class concerns and wrangling over legislation. The earliest female university graduates in Ireland were demure, hardworking and performatively feminine. This paper examines how the campaign for women's higher education in Ireland, and the first female third level students in Ireland, responded to contemporary ideology regarding gender roles. It suggests that the first female university students in Ireland were engaged in a delicate balancing act, seeking access to previously forbidden male-dominated spaces, yet simultaneously attempting to preserve their femininity and respect decorum. This paper will also analyse the gender geography of third level institutions, and the way in which the separate spheres ideology was mapped onto universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of datafication, social networking, and globalization, "digital citizenship" has become an increasingly relevant and popular concept employed by diverse societal actors to promote digital capacity, literacy, and participation. To date, however, limited scholarly attention has been paid to the role of gender power relations in digital citizenship discourses, theories, or practices. In this paper, we conceptualize digital citizenship as a status (what it means to be a citizen), a practice (what it means to act as a citizen), and an intersubjective experience (what it means to occupy the outside, inside, or liminal space of citizenship). We argue that an intersectional, multi-layered, feminist approach to digital citizenship offers a valuable way to first analyze gender subordination and exclusionary practices in digital societies, and second to guide action that promotes a feminist democratic project of transformation and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of this paper engage in academic sparring. Sparring is a process, a training, and a dialogue. This paper brings into dialogue the boxing bodies and autoethnographic experiences of the authors alongside the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler. By applying a feminist reading to Bourdieu's concepts of capital and habitus, the authors explore how the repetitive nature of boxing training can promote change. The paper considers boxing training as a transcendental identity project where individual labour is invested in order to affect change in symbolic capital. The repetitive nature of training leads to a habitus split, or habitus clivé. This split causes the boxer to renegotiate concepts of self as they engage with their own and other socially qualified and gendered bodies. This split exposes the freedoms and limitations of identity work as the boxers develop new habitus with and through their bodies (hexis). The authors argue that a reading of the performance of boxing bodies demonstrates the complex relationship between change, freedom, and restriction. Boxing is a physical culture supported by pervasive, hegemonic narratives which focus on the demonstration and development of respect and discipline. This paper explores the extent to which the repetitive nature of boxing training can be considered transgressive or resistant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of increasing risk for aid workers, a growing body of scholarship is focused on risk management in contexts of humanitarian assistance and development work. Much less attention, however, has been given to how staff and volunteers experience such risks. This paper adopts a feminist geographical approach to explore how development workers make meaning of risk in specific contexts. Adopting a qualitative approach, it draws upon 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews with international (7) and local (7) staff of an international educational and sporting non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Afghanistan. After exploring differences between local and foreign staff perceptions of risk, it also offers a gendered analysis of risk for women development workers in Afghanistan. In so doing, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature in 'Aidland' studies by revealing the complex understandings of risk and fear by both foreign and local staff in the same geographical and organisational context. For NGOs seeking to make life-saving decisions based on the calculation of risk, this paper evidences the need to also create space for the voices of local and foreign staff whose experiences of risk will be highly relational, embodied, gendered and context specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While feminist and queer pedagogic literatures can celebrate the inclusion of "other lives", and the successes of their endeavours, this paper seeks to focus on the "here" and everyday hegemonies of heterosexualities and masculinities and the "failings" inherent to teaching practices. When engaging Irish and UK students in learning about geographies of genders and sexualities teaching about hegemonies seeks to perform a political pedagogy of questioning privilege from our positionings. The teaching that I discuss is informed by student and popular presumptions about places such as Ireland and the UK as "sorted" and, indeed, "leaders" in terms of progress about sexualities (and gender identities). Such presumptions not only create specific geopolitical regimes, but have specific classroom manifestations. In this paper, I reflect on my presumed "outness" and deliberate non-namings in shared/communal spaces, extending the discussion of "here" to include how personal-institutional-national nexus create, and are created by, teaching spaces. Thus, the paper explores diverse possibilities for teaching social difference and how pedagogies are always geographically created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines social media movements, specifically #MeToo, in relation to the politics of feminism and white privilege in the contemporary global political economy. Analysis of social media movements is located as a key part of the intricate web of practices that enable certain types of gendered identity and socioeconomic privilege to intersect, in powerful ways and to potent effect. The paper argues that, while scholarship on the global political economy has not often taken seriously popular culture sources in and across world politics, and needs to do better in this regard, investigating the politics of popular culture, race and socioeconomic privilege in contemporary world politics is important. This is because such analysis foregrounds everyday, cultural practices of knowledge formation, building space for emphasising relations of power but also highlighting the possibilities of and for resistance, agency and avenues for creative thinking and doing in world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like other pop-cultural forms, videogames commonly reify militarist representations of warfare as straightforward, precise, and moral by obscuring conflict's embodied messiness. But videogames do not just reflect militarist interests in their content; they are materially, symbiotically entangled with militarist interests. Recognising this intimate connection, and the phenomenon of virtuous warfare that results, this paper takes videogames seriously as material cultural artefacts. This paper draws on feminist IR, critical military studies, and game studies to explore three categories of bodies, and their gendered logics, produced by virtualised warfare: the hypermasculine, technologised soldier; the oft-ignored broken bodies of the soldier and game developer; and the obfuscated civilian. Together, this analysis argues that the consumption and production of videogames benefits certain parties, in ways that are reproduced and sustained through the production and obfuscation of bodies. Such entanglements have real consequences for how war, and its popular culture production, is understood and imagined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]