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In this paper I interrogate Virginia Woolf’s depiction of grief in Jacob’s Room (1922). Read through Bonnie Honig’s notion of feminist refusal, I unpack the novel’s form, ultimately bringing Woolf’s revisionist history and critical elegy into the context of the planetary violence contingent to the climate crisis. Concluding with a reflection on the ‘childish’ refusal of figures like Greta Thunberg who infamously told world leaders in 2021 that she did not care for their ‘blah, blah, blah’ climate policy, the paper draws parallels between Woolf’s refusal of war and the violence that threatens to sacrifice the children of this century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the complex relationship between gender inequality and economic growth in South Korea over the past two decades. Despite South Korea's remarkable economic advancement, its persistent gender inequalities challenge conventional assumptions about economic development fostering gender equality. By examining labor market dynamics, the institutionalization of care labor, and the positions of women's organizations, this study reveals a crucial paradox: while statistics show improvements in women's labor participation and social spending, these changes obscure underlying structural inequalities. This finding contributes to feminist theoretical debates on the neoliberal cooptation of feminist movements, demonstrating how neoliberal reforms have created opportunities for feminist advancement while simultaneously reinforcing structural gender inequalities. Finally, this study sheds light on care workers’ collective action as a critical site for examining new political momentum. Their struggles illuminate both the contradictions within the expanding care economy and the possibilities for reimagining feminist politics and social protection in contemporary South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gendering democracy in parliaments faces a wave of active opposition against gender equality by far-right parties and anti-gender movements in Europe. In this adverse context, advancing gender equality policies relies on discourses and practices that address this opposition. What are the feminist parliamentary strategies to respond to anti-gender far-right opposition? This article studies feminist responses articulated in the Catalan parliament, the most gender-sensitive regional parliament is Spain, from the entry in 2021 of the far-right party Vox through interviews with members of Catalonia’s parliament and analysis of parliamentary debates. Whilst parliamentary groups and individuals respond through coalition-building, rule-making, knowledge production, and everyday pragmatic engagement with the far right, the Parliament as an institution appears less responsive. We identify new categories of responses, such as institutionalization of gender equality and protection and support. The gender-sensitive Catalan parliament shows how the disruptive impact of far-right anti-gender opposition on parliamentary democracy and equality goes beyond its small representation, by triggering polarization that jeopardizes parliamentary debates on gender equality and pushes them outside the parliament. Yet, the strength of the institutionalization of gender equality and alliances and the role of feminist civil society and critical actors equip the parliament to counter anti-gender opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, a liberal politics has dominated comparative abortion law, one almost too ubiquitous to name. This article tracks departures from liberal abortion law in Europe and the Americas that have reshaped the field of comparative abortion law. Section 2 examines the repurposing of liberal abortion law for illiberal ends in a conservative moment of authoritarian governments and their anti-gender campaigns. Drawing on larger ideas of autocratic legalism, the article analyzes how governments and courts have used the features of liberal abortion law to revoke or defeat abortion rights. Section 3 examines the counter-emergence of a feminist protest politics that has abandoned liberal abortion law in a democratic remaking of society and state. Today, in abortion lawmaking through democratized institutions and in the unmaking of abortion law through direct action, feminist movements are reclaiming comparative abortion law and its politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the prevalence of anti-gender politics in Europe, political institutions such as parliaments have become arenas of political struggles around gender and gender equality. While feminist scholarship has studied anti-gender politics, less attention has been paid to feminist responses to such opposition. The contribution of this article is to conceptualize feminist responses to anti-gender politics within political institutions, which we name feminist institutional responses. This conceptualization entails proposing a set of analytical categories for capturing forms of feminist institutional responses – namely, knowledge, coalition building, rule making, and everyday pragmatic engagement. We analyze 50 plenary debates on gender equality and two plenary debates on the State of the Union, as well as 135 interviews with members of the European Parliament and political staff during two terms that witnessed a rise in anti-gender politics, 2014–2019 and 2019–2024. The conceptualization of feminist institutional responses to anti-gender politics in parliaments is important for identifying how institutional actors are countering the destructive potential of anti-gender politics and safeguarding parliaments as democratic sites for the advancement of gender equality policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates an intellectual puzzle of how South Korean cooperative movements attempt to overcome the dilemma between localistic practices and the value of internationalism. Moving beyond anti-capitalistic debates of building links globally, the cooperative movement brings Fair Trade products from developing countries to consumer cooperatives in South Korea, resulting in a scaling up of community economies globally and forging real international solidarity. Engaging with feminist theories put forward by Gibson-Graham and their collaborators, this article calls upon an expanded feminist politics that challenge the "spatial bounding" of community economies that are often joined with localistic practices. Born as one of the most significant forms of community economies to address the economic precarity of grassroots farmers and workers during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, iCOOP was set up as a consumer cooperative federation to support local Korean producers with alternative market linkage. Through Fair Trade movement, iCOOP serves as an interesting case to overcome localistic practices and nurture the value of internationalism. This article develops an expanded feminist politics of community economies to confront the tendency of localistic practices by providing four layers of analysis: value, campaign tactics, new governance structure, and scaling solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2023 has been a year marking a turning point, with two women in leading positions for the first time in Italian politics. Elly Schlein was elected leader of the Democratic Party in February 2023, while a few months earlier Giorgia Meloni, leader of the radical right Brothers of Italy, became prime minister. When Schlein and Meloni celebrated their victory with the identical phrase 'They [the men] didn't see us coming', both leaders showed great awareness that their rise shook the traditionally Italian male dominated political environment. Will the election of the two leaders result in a more structural change? The article seeks to address this issue, focusing on three key aspects: the historical roots of the women's exclusion from Italian politics; the distinctive political careers of Meloni and Schlein; and the success of the radical right Meloni government in defending the traditional family, while Schlein is facing difficulties to revive the party and to build a single opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent writing by Latin American feminists offers a unique political philosophy based on a novel and transformative analysis of the relationship between capitalism, coloniality, patriarchy, and terracide. Focusing on the work of Rita Segato, Julieta Paredes, Lélia Gonzalez, Raquel Gutiérrez-Aguilar, and Moira Millán, this paper introduces the term "Rooted-South feminism" and outlines its epistemic-rationality. I first show how these thinkers root their epistemological frame in the collective struggle of racialized women. Through this account I then make explicit the relational political ontology that grounds their thinking, paradigmatically expressed in the notions of "territory-body-land" and "terracide." In describing how patriarchy functions as a system of domination that desensitises subjects to the suffering of the Other, I argue that Rooted-South feminists expose the structural relationship between capitalism, coloniality, violence against women, and the destruction of the Earth. Here, the feminine is conceived as a social function produced throughout the long histories of women. This "politics in a feminine key" uniquely understands the sphere of reproduction not simply as a vector of domination, but as the foundation for the liberation and regeneration of life in its totality. Rooted-South feminists propose an authentic historical pluralism engaged in the co-construction of an inhabited earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what ways can we understand the productive tensions and complexities of digital feminist activism? This paper explores the increase of networked feminism, which focuses attention on digital activism and its relation to transformative social change. It suggests that we need a better understanding of how digital feminist activism might be changing the shape of transnational feminist resistance and praxis, and how feminist politics are created and enacted in digitally mediated environments. These result in new forms of feminist consciousness built on affective and embodied engagements. The paper explores the complex and ambivalent role of affective politics and embodied ethics to explore conditions of vulnerability. Using illustrative, global cases to show the nuances across digital activism, the paper contributes to understanding the complexities and differential effects of online environments, the mediation of feminist politics through digital knowledge cultures and the possibilities, challenges, and productive tensions that lie in the ever‐increasing use of digital environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of feminist democratic societal projects relies on the production of feminist knowledge and ideas within social movements, as well as academic, professional, and institutional settings. In the context of a rising opposition against democracy and gender, race, and sexuality equality at a global level, the European Union has launched the call Feminisms for a New Age of Democracy with the purpose of supporting knowledge production about opposition to gender equality in Europe and feminist democratic responses. The CCINDLE (Co-creating Inclusive Intersectional Democratic Spaces across Europe) project is one of the funded research projects under this call. CCINDLE's objectives include analyzing not only anti-gender politics and the problems that they create for democracy in Europe but especially feminist movements' and institutional responses to anti-gender and anti-democratic forces. The project aims to co-create feminist knowledge with the actors that are already working to counter the antidemocratic project that anti-gender movements and far right parties are trying to construct, and to envision feminist futures building on theories and practices of intersectional justice, inclusion, and participation in European democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study maps the interactions of the Hindutva brand of political populism, which is in rise in India, with the feminist politics and concerns. To study this interaction, the article qualitatively studies the phenomenon of Hindutva-populism and feminist politics and uses the Bhartiya Janata Party, the Hindu-rightist political party, as the site to explore the gendered political culture and the complex relationship that populism and feminism share on the women question in their quest for political and social transformation in India. For this purpose, the article focuses on the broad themes, highlighting the differential visions of both projects, of: the lens through which the problems are diagnosed, the solutions proposed to these problems and the role of the related variables such as power, state and leadership, which puts them in a fundamental clash with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the contribution that the figure of economy can make to understanding gender in contemporary Britain, focusing on gender as a social quality and legal category that is produced, allocated and used. The article proceeds in two parts. The first part considers the politics of sex-based feminism and gender-as-diversity through an economic frame. The second part focuses, in detail, on one specific juncture where these diverging politics meet: decertification – a law reform proposal to dismantle the system for assigning, registering and regulating legal sex. Decertification is a controversial strategy. Advocates argue that self-expression and interpersonal communication, whether through gender or against it, is hindered by a state-based disciplinary certification system. Critics disagree. They argue that dismantling legal communication about a person's sex makes it harder to put categories of female and woman to remedial use. Drawing on other uses of certification, including commercial ones, this article suggests that certification not only communicates information about a process, quality or thing; it also contributes to their production. The impact of decertification on how gender is produced, what gets produced as gender and the uses to which gender is put are central to determining whether decertification is beneficial to a progressive transformative gender politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the subject of feminism continues to be central in contemporary feminist thought. In this article I discuss at length the philosophical arguments behind the position against transgender feminism, specifically those of Spanish enlightened feminism, which have had some impact in Latin American countries such as Mexico. I consider that this debate does not only concern women because it puts at stake the possibilities of emancipation in a moment of deep crisis. Moreover, the type of subject presupposed by this position contributes to a notion of the human that, in my opinion, must be deeply questioned. I argue that differences are not a limit for feminist politics, but the basis of a new pact for life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the symbolic construction of the 'people' and the 'homeland' in Spain's left populist party Podemos by exploring the gender and class meanings that Podemos leaders evoke in their representation of these two key elements of populist rhetoric. Distinguishing between the official symbolic presentation of the constituency, that purposely selects certain symbols to evoke particular meanings about the people and the homeland, and the subtext of gendered norms that symbols evoke, allows us understanding the possibilities of the Spanish left populist party to contribute to feminist politics. Podemos has a role in the process of meaning-making that envisions gender and class-aware societal projects through the symbolic representation of 'the people' and 'the homeland'. Yet, ambivalence in the egalitarian discourse and a symbolic subtext of unequal informal gendered norms in the party culture undermine the feminist commitments of the leadership adopted in the official presentation of the constituency. By capturing the gap between the official purposeful symbolic representation, that conveys a message of inclusive and feminist people-homeland, and the symbolic subtext of the party's discourse and performance, that reproduces exclusionary gendered norms, the article contributes to reflect on the inclusionary potential and contradictions of left populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Colombia, I once heard a farmer reject a humanitarian demining project operating in her community. "Land mines are our smallest problem," she said. Creating a moment of ethical disconcertment, she sought to slow down humanitarian imperatives. I place her in conversation with local pleas for "demining with development," illustrating how they challenge the logic and temporality of humanitarian mine action, drawing attention to the complexity of the violence that silently stalks rural life despite peace gestures and accords. By making such ecologies of trouble apparent, farmers enact what I call a politics of troublemaking. Offering a feminist take on the pacifying label of "troublemaker," I understand this politics as a demand to recognize the troubles of the living and dying in abandoned and occupied landscapes. These places are currently objects of a peace process that seeks to recuperate them, but they are also haunted by the dangers of dispossession, development, and postconflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article unpacks community-level female leadership among Malaysia’s indigenous Orang Asli community. The power dynamics of this community’s relationship with state institutions have been uneven. Critics accuse the authorities of infantilizing the community, through gendered and patriarchal behaviour (for example, male government officers only interact with male heads of communities). Based on the fieldwork including seven interviews with female and male Orang Asli grassroots leaders of an independent, pro-indigenous movement – one which is apparently “leaderless” in terms of its organizational structure – we show how they challenge the abovementioned attitudes through neo-empowerment and agentic efforts, through collective narratives of the environment, camaraderie and compassion. These grassroots efforts also appeal to a new cohort of indigenous people, embody gentle negotiation strategies, and recognize gendered discourses of agency and control. We show how this leads to the creation of a more inclusive, progressive, and feminist-driven empowerment strategy, eventually building resistance to traditional patriarchal structures.

This article explores feminist art criticism from the point of view of aesthetics/politics in global contemporary art. It is based on the author's experience as an art critic and founding editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal (1998–2017). Reading articles published in the previous two decades both for the journal and outside it, it became possible to identify how subjects produce specific objects in art criticism that demonstrate different locations and standpoints in thought and how these align with criticism from broader feminist political theories. This is an exploration of the aesthetics/politics both in, about and beyond feminist art criticism. The methodology presented analyses feminist art criticism using a model of clusters of concepts that draws on Anne Ring Petersen's examination of identity politics, race and multiculturalism from 2012. Feminist analyses in which this approach has been attempted are discussed: Sue Rosser's 2005 analysis of cyberfeminism and Tuzyline Jita Allan's 1995 discussion of black/womanist/African feminisms. The article identifies four types of feminist art criticism: liberal feminism, materialist feminism, feminist cosmopolitan multi-culturalism, and queer post-colonial feminism. The aims, methods and approaches of these tendencies are outlined to demonstrate the differences between them. The article concludes with a discussion about the futures of feminist art criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the history, males have held positions of power in Western society, with women relegated to the home and private spheres. Women in Medieval Europe had no legal protections that would allow them to be business owners, students, or political leaders. While several provinces in the US allowed women's right to vote well before national government did so, it was not until the early 20th century that women were able to vote or occupy political office throughout much of the country or in Europe. Traditionally, women were not authorised to represent themselves in legal or business proceedings without a male partner present. Women who were married were not allowed to make decisions about their own offspring without their spouses' permission. Women were also not permitted to work in most professions and had extremely limited options for education. Such sex discrimination against women persists to this day in various regions of the globe. Novels by Rebecca Walker shed light on these issues and hold strong feminist perspectives, allowing the readers to get a deeper understanding of women and their issues in the male-centric society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Arundhati Roy and Kamila Shamsie, as profound South-Asian women writers, have often been associated with postcolonial politics or feminist agendas. However, this paper attempts to recontextualise their works, The God of Small Things and Broken Verses, respectively, to uncover the particularities of their politics. While enmeshed in the ideas about the nation, patriarchy, and colonialism, these texts deal with the specificities of individual families. Yet, the representation of the family, in these works, is not conventional as these authors attempt to either reveal the interstitial spaces within the family, or try to restructure a normative bond, or finally, even reject the family to accommodate individual desires. Ultimately, their postcolonial or feminist politics do not overshadow the multiplicity of a family: as an ever-evolving and diversified entity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Purpose: Fahmida Riaz was able to articulate precise feminist politics through her voice because she was audible to many women in the Pakistani context. The current study investigates how her writings about the female body were not merely a tool to celebrate or raise the sexual distance, but also influenced a political intervention and shifted the dominant patriarchal structures present in literary as well as other social and political levels. The purpose of the research is to shed light on how a specific poet's voice was able to reach a large audience of women and articulate explicitly feminist politics in Pakistan. Methodology: The Feminist Discourse Analysis (FCDA), another dimension of CDA, is employed in the analysis. The application of the FCDA model is adapted to examine how textual representations of gendered practices produce and sustain one gender power and dominance over the other. For the study, an operational method based on four models has been developed: the Fairclough Model, the Porreca Model (Porreca, 1984), Halliday's Transitivity Model (1985), and the FCDA (Lazar, 2005). Findings: The findings clearly demonstrated how power abuse and gender domination are explicitly present in women's literature. The analysis discusses in detail how gender is constructed in these poems, and how this construction gave women a new perspective on life and defined how they are exploited in the name of social and religious cultures. Contributions: With the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan, the male-dominated patriarchal narrative is receiving renewed attention. However, based on the findings obtained, greater attention should be paid to the female narrative and the discourse produced by female writers. A similar analysis can be performed on the writings of Kishwar Naheed, another feminist writer, to gain a better understanding of the poetics of Muslim Feminist Narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experimental double‐conscious autoethnography narrates my navigation of remote learning after the COVID‐19 outbreak between mid‐March and early June 2020 as an apparent Muslim mother at a public school in upstate New York. To this end, using handwritten notes in a daily journal, I first delineated the process of becoming a visibly Muslim mother, which started earlier and reached a head after moving to the United States in 2018. In this way, using an autoethnographic style based on my experience of remote learning as a Muslim mother, I will present a dialog with feminist insights to reiterate that personal experience and cultural experience are incapable of being disentangled, that personal experience matters, and that all experience, however personal or private, is structured in a broader political and historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debates on, in, and between feminist and trans* movements have been politically intense at best and aggressively hostile at worst. The key contestations have revolved around three issues: First, the question of who constitutes a woman; second, what constitute feminist interests; and third, how trans* politics intersects with feminist politics. Despite decades of debates and scholarship, these impasses remain unbroken. In this article, our aim is to work out a way through these impasses. We argue that all three types of contestations are deeply invested in notions of identity, and therefore dealt with in an identitarian way. This has not been constructive in resolving the antagonistic relationship between the trans* movement and feminism. We aim to disentangle the antagonism within anti-trans* feminist politics on the one hand, and trans* politics’ responses to that antagonism on the other. In so doing, we argue for a politics of status-based recognition (drawing on Fraser, 2000a, 2000b) instead of identity-based recognition, highlighting individuals’ specific needs in society rather than women’s common interests (drawing on Jónasdóttir, 1991), and conceptualising the intersections of the trans* movement and feminism as mutually shaping rather than as trans* as additive to the feminist project (drawing on Walby, 2007, and Walby, Armstrong, and Strid, 2012). We do this by analysing the main contemporary scholarly debates on the relationship between the trans* movement and feminism within feminist and trans* politics. Unafraid of a polemic approach, our selection of material is strategic and illuminates the specific arguments put forward in the article.

This article explores feminist art criticism from the point of view of aesthetics/politics in global contemporary art. It is based on the author’s experience as an art critic and founding editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal (1998–2017). Reading articles published in the previous two decades both for the journal and outside it, it became possible to identify how subjects produce specific objects in art criticism that demonstrate different locations and standpoints in thought and how these align with criticism from broader feminist political theories. This is an exploration of the aesthetics/politics both in, about and beyond feminist art criticism. The methodology presented analyses feminist art criticism using a model of clusters of concepts that draws on Anne Ring Petersen’s examination of identity politics, race and multiculturalism from 2012. Feminist analyses in which this approach has been attempted are discussed: Sue Rosser’s 2005 analysis of cyberfeminism and Tuzyline Jita Allan’s 1995 discussion of black/womanist/African feminisms. The article identifies four types of feminist art criticism: liberal feminism, materialist feminism, feminist cosmopolitan multi-culturalism, and queer post-colonial feminism. The aims, methods and approaches of these tendencies are outlined to demonstrate the differences between them. The article concludes with a discussion about the futures of feminist art criticism.

Copyright of Grafía is the property of Universidad Autonoma de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas 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 paper analyzes the interplay of left populist and feminist politics through a case study of Podemos ('we can'), a Spanish left populist party that reproduces a dominant gendered logic of politics despite its feminist interpretation of democratic renewal. I argue that this is the result of fundamental contradictions between the feminist and populist projects of political transformation that coexist in the party. Even if left populism offers a more productive terrain for gender equality than right populism, central tenets of populism disrupt feminist commitments and goals. Chief among these are the oversimplification of the political field based on a limited diagnosis, the exclusionary appeals to the homeland and to a homogenizing collectivity of the people, the dominant masculine and personalistic logics of charismatic leaders, the prioritization of electoral success over other forms of political transformation, and the resulting gendered political culture that marginalizes empowerment, inclusion, and participatory democratic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism is everywhere in Europe today: in politics and in research. Most research on populism has neglected the relationship between gender equality and populism. The aim of this symposium is precisely to scrutinize the relationship between feminist politics and right-wing and left-wing populist parties in Europe. The contribution of the symposium is twofold: to empirically investigate the relationship between feminist politics and both left and right populism, so as to provide a more holistic picture of their impact on feminist politics; and to study populist political parties both at the national level and at the level of the European Parliament. The symposium demonstrates the centrality of gender issues in the politics of populist parties and documents the effects populism has on gender relations, gender equality policies, and feminist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article traces the emergence of a new politics of jurisdiction in legal abortion debates in Mexico. It analyzes how jurisdictional claims work as a kind of lawfare from “above” and “below” examining: 1) how the Mexican Supreme Court invoked technicalities of jurisdiction to settle the constitutional conflict over the decriminalization of abortion in Mexico City, and 2) how a feminist litigator reappropriated the court's formal principles of legality toward their own ends in what they call “legal guerilla.” Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City, the author explores how competing jurisdictions create ambiguous spaces and temporalities of inclusion and exclusion from legality and clinical care. In closing, she argues that feminist activists who work to create access and people who seek abortion enact their own forms of “legal guerilla” as they move through these overlapping and contradictory legalities.

This article takes up the commonplace antagonism between 'second wave' lesbian feminism and 'third wave' queer theory and politics, and argues that the antagonism itself is both historically and politically reductive. First, I make the case that 'third wave' queer theory actually shares its central concern – namely, accountability for intra-group inequalities – with lesbian feminism. However, I argue that 'third wave' queer theories ultimately founder in their bid for a more reflexive political praxis by tending to hold others – lesbian feminists – accountable for ongoing inequalities rather than grappling with them directly. By contrast, I show that lesbian feminists from the late 1970s to the late 1980s developed a reparative politics that succeeds where 'third wave' theories stumble by developing relationships of mutual accountability around issues of race and racism, and by establishing processes by which to repair these relationships when they founder. I conclude by arguing that a fuller attention to the history of lesbian feminism, in fact, offers important resources for feminists and queers dealing with issues of intra-group marginalization, such as transphobia, in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Direito GV is the property of Fundacao Getulio Vargas 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.)

In 2005, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) approved the aid effectiveness principles for improving the impact of Official Development Assistance (ODA). Donor countries such as Spain understood this agenda as an opportunity to promote gender equality in their development co-operation policy. However, gender equality almost disappeared as a priority in most of the bilateral agreements after 2005. This puzzling outcome leads me to ask how the implementation of the Paris principles made gender equality less of a priority, and how the feminist movement can ensure that gender equality and women's rights are at the centre of this agenda. To answer these questions, I examine the negotiation process of the Peruvian–Spanish Strategic Framework 2013–2016. This case shows how exclusionary informal mechanisms may leave women's rights organisations out of negotiation processes. I argue that connections of feminist and women's movements with 'femocrats' and gender critical actors inside state machineries are crucial to defend gender equality as a priority sector. This is particularly relevant in the post-COVID-19 scenario and the global goal of 'building back better' with a gender lens. Without the participation of gender justice advocates in aid negotiation processes, it becomes more difficult to prioritise gender equality in bilateral co-operation agreements and, consequently, to allocate funds for women's rights organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two scholars and an artist undertake a creative journey through the intellectual histories of sexuality studies, psychoanalysis, and feminism to ask: what does orgasm have to do with feminist politics? Inspired by Mireia Sallarès's five-hour documentary, Las muertes chiquitas (2013) or Little Deaths, we rummage through the history of knowledge about the clitoris and female orgasm. Buried there, we find a most unexpected guide, a pleasure princess, an intimate of Freud's, and the matriarch of French psychoanalysis: Marie Bonaparte, the great-grandniece of the French emperor and Princess of Denmark and Greece. Bonaparte was rebellious and afflicted, defiant and coquettish, a woman who submitted herself to several genital surgeries in search of her orgasm, and an intellectual who wrote a number of books and articles, including Female Sexuality (1953). In this essay, which includes original artwork by Francesca Brunetti and excerpts of an original interview with Sallarès, we take inspiration from Bonaparte's devotion to pleasure and make unexpected connections to contemporary black feminist and queer thought in order to ask: what life does orgasm potentially give to feminist politics? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three different conceptions of ethics within contemporary feminist theory and how they depict the connection between ethics and politics. The first position, represented by Wendy Brown, mainly describes ethics as a sort of anti-political moralism and apolitical individualism, and hence as a turn away from politics. The second position, represented by Saba Mahmood, discusses ethics as a precondition for politics, while the third position, represented by Vikki Bell, depicts it as the 'external consciousness' of the political, and as destabilising political discourse by confronting it with singularity and 'radical' difference. Though they represent distinct positions, the article argues, all three suffer from a tendency to reify ethics by failing to give a contextualised account of it. The article then introduces the ethical perspective of Judith Butler, arguing that she – while offering both a transhistorical and a contextualised dimension – tends to psychologise and individualise ethics and politics. The last part of the article introduces Terry Eagleton and what, in a Marxist vein, could be called a 'materialist ethics' or an 'ethics of socialism', and argues that this way of framing the relationship between ethics and politics provides a solution to the trap of reification identified in the three described positions. This part also discusses how Eagleton's theory relates to – but also differs from – arguments made by Butler. One advantage of Eagleton's work, the article argues, is that it does not psychologise and individualise ethics and politics as Butler's work does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debates on, in, and between feminist and trans* movements have been politically intense at best and aggressively hostile at worst. The key contestations have revolved around three issues: First, the question of who constitutes a woman; second, what constitute feminist interests; and third, how trans* politics intersects with feminist politics. Despite decades of debates and scholarship, these impasses remain unbroken. In this article, our aim is to work out a way through these impasses. We argue that all three types of contestations are deeply invested in notions of identity, and therefore dealt with in an identitarian way. This has not been constructive in resolving the antagonistic relationship between the trans* movement and feminism. We aim to disentangle the antagonism within anti-trans* feminist politics on the one hand, and trans* politics' responses to that antagonism on the other. In so doing, we argue for a politics of status-based recognition (drawing on Fraser, 2000a, 2000b) instead of identity-based recognition, highlighting individuals' specific needs in society rather than women's common interests (drawing on Jónasdóttir, 1991), and conceptualising the intersections of the trans* movement and feminism as mutually shaping rather than as trans* as additive to the feminist project (drawing on Walby, 2007, and Walby, Armstrong, and Strid, 2012). We do this by analysing the main contemporary scholarly debates on the relationship between the trans* movement and feminism within feminist and trans* politics. Unafraid of a polemic approach, our selection of material is strategic and illuminates the specific arguments put forward in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, the #MeToo hashtag drew focus to the issue of sexual harassment in Australia, following its widespread reach in the United States. However, long before #MeToo made waves around the globe, feminist activists on university campuses were highlighting the prevalence of sexual violence in their communities. These dialogues in Australia have proceeded on somewhat separate terrains, with relatively few student activists taking up the #MeToo banner in their campaigns. Nonetheless, the narrative of #MeToo continues to be retrospectively mapped onto student sexual assault activism in the media and public discourse. This paper considers the disjunct between the campus sexual assault movement and the '#MeToo moment' in Australia through first-hand research conducted with student feminist activists. It explores the racial and class politics of the so-called '#MeToo moment' in Australia, and critiques the way in which diverse feminist movements against sexual violence have been subsumed under the master narrative of #MeToo. For these movements to have transformative potential, I suggest, requires sexual violence activists to engage with anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles, beyond the narrow vision posited by #MeToo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Avant is the property of Centre for Philosophical Research 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.)

Media coverage of violence against women and girls (VAWG) has increased in recent years, due to high-profile investigations such as the 2012 Jimmy Savile case in the UK, and in response to the #MeToo movement in the USA. Feminist organisations are likely to be asked for comment by the media as a result, but journalistic interest in case details rather than systemic causes of VAWG means that political messages focused on ending VAWG remain difficult to communicate. In contrast, social media is frequently celebrated as a channel through which the politics of feminist organisations can be promoted more directly, bypassing mainstream media agendas. In this article, we present the results of participatory research that explored the tensions inherent in social media use by one UK feminist organisation, Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW). The findings challenge the utopian view of social media as a panacea for news media shortcomings. Rather than being unequivocally positive, integrating social media into a feminist organisation's communication work is a double-edged sword, bringing significant challenges that users must negotiate on a daily basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As queer owned and operated spaces shut down and we increasingly find ourselves annexed to public institutions and/or private corporate spaces, how do we build truly radical community practices? This piece critically reflects on the practical aspects of organising RadFem/Trans: A Love Story – an event on feminist history and trans inclusion that took place at BFI Flare 2018. It also examines how we might to create the conditions for a better conversation, greater trans inclusion, and deeper organisational thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]