Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Women's Studies

Journal

Gender

Institution
Publication Year
Publication

Articles 1 - 30 of 204

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Forced Migration As A “State Of Exception”: The Precarious Lives Of Migrant Women Of Jammu And Kashmir In Kulvir Gupta’S Embers The Beginning And Embers The End Of Mirpur, Rishav Bali, Isha Malhotra May 2024

Forced Migration As A “State Of Exception”: The Precarious Lives Of Migrant Women Of Jammu And Kashmir In Kulvir Gupta’S Embers The Beginning And Embers The End Of Mirpur, Rishav Bali, Isha Malhotra

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper explores the lost stories of the precarious lives of thousands of migrant women from the community that the Indian government officially calls Displaced Persons of Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (DPs of PoJK). We examine the stories of those who survived the painful migration that followed tribal raids in the western parts of the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, which ceased to exist after its accession with the Union of India on October 26, 1947. Drawing on the concept of precarity as propounded by Judith Butler, this paper critically examines the torturous experiences of women in Kulvir Gupta’s autobiography, …


Gender And Social Media: Delving Into Young Adults’ Daily Participation On Facebook, Masa Tantawy May 2024

Gender And Social Media: Delving Into Young Adults’ Daily Participation On Facebook, Masa Tantawy

Culture, Society, and Praxis

With the prevalence of social networking platforms, it is crucial to study the role that gender plays in its use, for gender, which is continuously shaped by society, plays a critical role in our identities and daily lives. This paper explores how the social construction of gender affects and is affected by social media through discussing the usage of Facebook by young adults, especially Middle Eastern cisgender males and females, and women’s limited freedom on this social networking site in the Arab countries. It is argued that despite individuals having some freedom online compared to offline, their choices, specifically that …


Educational Migration And Agency Among Tribal Young Women, Deepika Kumari Meena Mar 2024

Educational Migration And Agency Among Tribal Young Women, Deepika Kumari Meena

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper, I examine the understanding of agency among the tribal young women attending college in Pratapgarh (Rajasthan), India. Particularly in light of this shift in their living and academic spaces, I look at how they interpret and perform their agency when it comes to being in a romantic relationship and getting married. It is not uncommon for tribal members to engage in romantic relationships and to seek love marriages. The number of young women migrating for education is increasing. As a result of educational migration, the practice of live-in relationships, romantic relationships, and love marriages has also increased …


“You Take My Place; Let’S Switch!” What It Means To Be A Woman Powerlifter In Parasport, Aaron Carl S. Seechung, Maria Luisa M. Guinto Mar 2024

“You Take My Place; Let’S Switch!” What It Means To Be A Woman Powerlifter In Parasport, Aaron Carl S. Seechung, Maria Luisa M. Guinto

The Qualitative Report

Gendered disability in elite sport has emerged as a pertinent area of inquiry in sport psychology. However, qualitative research aimed at amplifying the voices of marginalized subgroups is notably sparse. Employing a phenomenological approach, we examined the lived experience of a Filipina para powerlifter, probing the intersection of gender, disability, and socioeconomic status in shaping how the participant made sense of life and identity, both within and outside the realm of sport. Three personal experiential themes were generated from the interview data's interpretative phenomenological analysis: “survival of the fittest,” “the voices in my head did not allow me to give …


The Other Dimensions Of Dalit Oppression: Tracing Intersectionality Through Ants Among Elephants, Arundhati Sen Jan 2024

The Other Dimensions Of Dalit Oppression: Tracing Intersectionality Through Ants Among Elephants, Arundhati Sen

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper demonstrates how gender abuse is not merely restricted to hierarchical gender oppression but also operates within an intersectional framework where gender is intertwined with hierarchical caste exploitation. While revisiting White bourgeois feminism, bell hooks emphasizes the incorporation of different marginal perspectives to make feminism an all-encompassing radical movement, accessible to everyone. Inspired by the lens that hooks uses to interpret Black feminism and the Indian scholars who approach Dalit feminism from an intersectional standpoint, I analyze Sujatha Gidla’s autobiography Ants among Elephants (2017), a family story of a lower-middle-class rural South Indian Dalit woman. I argue for the …


Collaborations, Not Competitions, Can Reduce Gender Disparities In Robotics, Sonia Roberts, Alysson Light Dec 2023

Collaborations, Not Competitions, Can Reduce Gender Disparities In Robotics, Sonia Roberts, Alysson Light

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.


Joyland: A Story Of Unquenchable Desires, Salma Javed Oct 2023

Joyland: A Story Of Unquenchable Desires, Salma Javed

Journal of International Women's Studies

Contrary to the title, Saim Sadiq’s debut work Joyland is about struggling with gender identities and unquenchable desires in a conventional society. This heart-breaking drama of a conservative family belongs to the exceptional kind of cinema that sews craft with content. This poignant tale contains such intrigue that the viewers feel glued to the aching narrative until the very last minutes of the movie. The storyline follows three men protagonists from a damaged family, and four women characters, including a transgender woman. The story takes a turn when Haider, one of the main characters, falls in love with Biba, a …


We Deliver: The Condition Of The Woman Academic In India Today, Ananya Dutta Gupta Oct 2023

We Deliver: The Condition Of The Woman Academic In India Today, Ananya Dutta Gupta

Journal of International Women's Studies

This auto-ethnographic essay draws upon Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge to discuss the condition of Indian women in the Humanities in academia today. While acknowledging the encouragingly gender-inclusive projections in India’s National Education Policy vision statement from 2020, I argue for more probing engagement with the concrete reality of being a woman teacher and researcher in the increasingly competitive and corporatized milieu of higher education. My methodology has been a close reading of the NEP’s vision statement to analyze recurrences of terms and concepts as pointers to its discursive field. I argue that this policy statement implicitly envisions an empowered new-age …


From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr Oct 2023

From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …


Feminist Foreign Policy And The War In Ukraine: Hollow Framework Or Rallying Force?, Sara J. Chehab Aug 2023

Feminist Foreign Policy And The War In Ukraine: Hollow Framework Or Rallying Force?, Sara J. Chehab

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines the applicability of Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) frameworks following the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War. By looking at how Sweden, France, Canada, and Mexico responded to the war in the February 2022 to January 2023 period, the paper seeks to examine whether states’ reactions were in line with their FFP commitments or whether FFP was placed on the backburner in the face of a major threat. While there has not been a common feminist response to the war in Ukraine because states have responded through different means without consistently employing their FFP principles, the article argues that a clear …


Excavation Of Silenced Voices: (Re)Visiting Menka Shivdasani’S Frazil Through The Modern Feminist Discourse Of Indian Writing In English, Rangnath Thakur, Binod Mishra Jul 2023

Excavation Of Silenced Voices: (Re)Visiting Menka Shivdasani’S Frazil Through The Modern Feminist Discourse Of Indian Writing In English, Rangnath Thakur, Binod Mishra

Journal of International Women's Studies

The postmodernist phase of Indian English writing is characterized by the voices of many strong women expressing a feminist exploration of alternative discourses in women’s writing which are distinguished from the patriarchal framework of literary discourse. Along with Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Imtiaz Dharkar, and Eunice de Souza, Menka Shivdasani is an active voice in contemporary Indian English poetry. Shivdasani is a prolific poet who has written poetry on various social, cultural, religious, and personal issues. Her four poetry collections include Nirvana at Ten Rupees (1990), Stet (2001), Safe House (2015), and Frazil (2018). Through her poetry, she has endeavored …


Assertion Or Transgression: A Critical Study Of Surpankha As An Unwelcomed Girl Child In Kavita Kané’S Lanka’S Princess, Nancy Sharma, Smita Jha Jul 2023

Assertion Or Transgression: A Critical Study Of Surpankha As An Unwelcomed Girl Child In Kavita Kané’S Lanka’S Princess, Nancy Sharma, Smita Jha

Journal of International Women's Studies

Kavita Kané’s Lanka’s Princess is the retelling of Ramayana3 from the perspective of the often misrepresented and misunderstood character of Surpankha,4 the daughter of rishi (sage) Vishravas and rakshasi (monster) Kaiskesi. Kavita Kané uses myths as a pretext to defy the idea of an ideal femininity in her book. Kané’s representation humanizes the character of Surpankha (translation: woman with sharp fingernails) who was born as the beautiful princess Meenakshi, but her defiant demeanor caused her brother Ravan to give her the name of Surpankha. Kané’s work exhibits the inner thought process of an unwelcome girl child in the family who …


Journey, Movement, Affect And Rhythm: Migration Through North Indian Folk Songs, Sangeeta Gupta, Shambhavi Gupta Jun 2023

Journey, Movement, Affect And Rhythm: Migration Through North Indian Folk Songs, Sangeeta Gupta, Shambhavi Gupta

International Journal on Responsibility

This paper captures the lived experiences and affect associated with migration, through the folk songs of North India. While migration is usually studied as a larger demographic movement involving temporary or permanent displacement and departure, our project captures the pain and apprehension it entails. We have tried to retrieve the vital connection between gender and migration through an analysis of folk songs about the experiences of women. These songs passed down as a part of the oral tradition, articulate how a woman engages and interacts with migration – both due to her marriage and also when her husband leaves home …


“She Was No Taller Than Your Thumb. So She Was Called Thumbelina”: Gender, Disability, And Visual Forms In Hans Christian Andersen’S “Thumbelina” (1835), Hannah J. Helm Jun 2023

“She Was No Taller Than Your Thumb. So She Was Called Thumbelina”: Gender, Disability, And Visual Forms In Hans Christian Andersen’S “Thumbelina” (1835), Hannah J. Helm

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This article explores representations of femininity and disability in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “Thumbelina” (1835) and select examples of his paper art. In this article, I argue that, on one level, the fairy tale and Andersen’s own paper cuttings uphold feminine and ableist norms. However, on another level, these literary and visual forms simultaneously work to destabilise social prejudices and challenge bodily normativity. I explore how characters and themes associated with the fairy tale and paper art can be (re)read in strength-based ways. In the story, Thumbelina experiences the world through her smallness, and key themes including accessibility, physical …


Mary Sidney’S The Tragedy Of Antony And Fadwa Tuqan’S A Mountainous Journey: Language, Gender Politics, And The Emergence Of Authorial Identities, Bilal Hamamra Jun 2023

Mary Sidney’S The Tragedy Of Antony And Fadwa Tuqan’S A Mountainous Journey: Language, Gender Politics, And The Emergence Of Authorial Identities, Bilal Hamamra

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article engages with the critical lenses of new historicism and presentism, using Fadwa Tuqan’s A Mountainous Journey and the discourse of Palestinian female martyrs as contemporary intertexts to scrutinize women’s silence, speech, and authorial identity in Mary Sidney’s early modern English work The Tragedy of Antony. I contend this text enabled Sidney to construct a narrative of mourning for her brother Philip Sidney, just as Tuqan uses her writing to mourn her brother Ibrahim Tuqan. It is argued here that Sidney’s and Tuqan’s creation of their authorial identities emanated from their close relationships with their brothers. I argue that …


Notes To My Dad, Karen Vang May 2023

Notes To My Dad, Karen Vang

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This is a critical reflection of my experience navigating higher education as a Hmong woman. My dad is well known among our clan to be very “traditional” and respectable. However, over the past 6 years during my graduate studies, my dad has remained my number one supporter. I sometimes, I tell him he is the chosen one, to derail his beliefs. At times, I begin to imagine what life would be like if I were a son. As for me, one of my mentors told me one time, that it is my sacred path to do this work. I have …


Masculinist Constructions Of Nationalism In India: Gender, Body Politics, And Hindi Cinema, Nupur Ray Apr 2023

Masculinist Constructions Of Nationalism In India: Gender, Body Politics, And Hindi Cinema, Nupur Ray

Journal of International Women's Studies

Nationalism is an evocative concept with multiple philosophies around its meanings, purposes and contentions. Symbols, imagery, and spectacle play an important role in cultural expressions of nationalism that sustain an emotional response. The paper argues that imaginative constructs of nationalism in India are primarily constructed around women’s bodily metaphors, sexual norms, and their maternal roles in families. Popular culture, particularly cinema, tends to reinforce power hierarchies in which women symbolizing the nation are in need of protection by men or the state as a masculine authority. Hindi cinema has been an integral part of the socio-cultural lives of people in …


Globalization And Migration: The Great Gender Equalizer?, Akm Ahsan Ullah, Sharifah Nurul Huda Alkaff, Shirley Chin Wei Lee, Diotima Chattoraj, Jannatul Ferdous Apr 2023

Globalization And Migration: The Great Gender Equalizer?, Akm Ahsan Ullah, Sharifah Nurul Huda Alkaff, Shirley Chin Wei Lee, Diotima Chattoraj, Jannatul Ferdous

Journal of International Women's Studies

Globalization has been extensively debated in a range of contexts, from trade to borders, international relations, and conflict. It appears to be a positive force for women as many scholars contend that it has offered women new opportunities, thus enhancing greater gender equality in many countries where traditional patriarchal structures are firmly entrenched. However, some scholars are more skeptical of the benefits of globalization for women. They note that despite women gaining an increasing share of employment opportunities in a globalized world, the expected redistribution of domestic, household, and childcare responsibilities often did not materialize. They also argue that multinational …


Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie Mar 2023

Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie

Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences

This research aimed to study the significance of Power Dressing in a modern democracy, by exploring the dynamics of clothing concerning the power it portrays for women holding influential positions in public office in a variety of countries throughout the world. This research accomplished its motive by collecting, reviewing, and analyzing scholarly articles, academic journals, newspapers, and current events which formed the foundation for data collection using a survey developed by the researchers. The analysis provided a platform for procuring knowledge of the association between Fashion and Politics, the concept of Women’s Power Dressing, and its significance in a modern …


Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie Mar 2023

Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie

Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences

This research aimed to study the significance of Power Dressing in a modern democracy, by exploring the dynamics of clothing concerning the power it portrays for women holding influential positions in public office in a variety of countries throughout the world. This research accomplished its motive by collecting, reviewing, and analyzing scholarly articles, academic journals, newspapers, and current events which formed the foundation for data collection using a survey developed by the researchers. The analysis provided a platform for procuring knowledge of the association between Fashion and Politics, the concept of Women’s Power Dressing, and its significance in a modern …


Feminist Theorizing In The International Relations Discipline, Inass Abdulsada Ali Mar 2023

Feminist Theorizing In The International Relations Discipline, Inass Abdulsada Ali

Journal of International Women's Studies

The discipline of International Relations has been a science for almost a century and has undergone considerable development and dynamism as a field of knowledge. In the aftermath of the First World War, traditional idealistic trends prevailed. Still, after the end of the Second World War, the theory of realism dominated the analysis of international relations, international politics, and its laws and mechanisms. With the inter-paradigm debate of the 1980s, a broad spectrum of theories of international relations emerged, the most significant of which are critical theories including feminism. Feminist theory has since become central to the debates about global …


Iranian Women's Movement: Political Opportunities And New Forces, Hamid Sajadi Mar 2023

Iranian Women's Movement: Political Opportunities And New Forces, Hamid Sajadi

Journal of International Women's Studies

The Iranian women's movement emerged and was sustained in an unprecedented way, although neither the movement's procedure nor the nature of the Iranian protesters' economic and social demands throughout the course of the previous ten years made its formation plausible. While unions have traditionally coordinated many Iranian protests, the present women's movement is non-union, has a national reach, and has been going strong for several months despite fierce government resistance. This study reviews the history and achievements of the women's protest movement in Iran since September 2022. In the past, women's activities have been severely constrained and suppressed by Iran's …


Gender Responsive Pedagogy Practices: Secondary School Science Teachers In Ethiopia, Mollaw Abrha, Asrat Dagnew Kelkay, Amera Seifu Feb 2023

Gender Responsive Pedagogy Practices: Secondary School Science Teachers In Ethiopia, Mollaw Abrha, Asrat Dagnew Kelkay, Amera Seifu

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines the current status of secondary school science teachers' gender-responsive pedagogy (GRP) practices. Women’s participation in secondary school teaching is a major concern in many regions of the world. The use of instructional strategies that promote gender inclusion and sensitivity in initial teacher training is very important in the development of teachers. In this paper, the use of gender-responsive pedagogy in Ethiopia’s secondary school program is highlighted. Using data from baseline, midterm, and end-line surveys, the paper addresses how tutors and mentors use gender-responsive pedagogy and the changes that have occurred as a result. The study adopted a …


Veiled Figures: Attached Settler Women In Andaman’S Post-Colonial Archive, Raka Banerjee Feb 2023

Veiled Figures: Attached Settler Women In Andaman’S Post-Colonial Archive, Raka Banerjee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Dominant discourse on India’s eastern Partition (1947) has constructed settlement as a masculine prerogative and man as the settler prototype. Women were eligible for rehabilitation on account of being “attached” to a male guardian, who would be assigned the head of the household in granting state benefits. In the case of these attached settler women transported by the state to Andaman Islands, a range of marginalities–region, gender, caste, and class–intersect with each other to create a veiled figure. The essay locates the settler women in the island’s post-colonial government archive to bring out the state’s construction of gendered settler subjecthood. …


Malintzin: La Mujer Americana, Alma D. Elías Nájera Jan 2023

Malintzin: La Mujer Americana, Alma D. Elías Nájera

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

Malintzin was a controversial Indigenous woman whose contributions to the Aztec conquest raised questions about what it meant to be a traitor with a limited agency. This essay recontextualizes Malintzin’s demonized identity and challenges masculinist sociocultural curations of gender, history, and knowledge production by infusing feminist theory into the cultural imaginaries of gender and racial stratification. By reintroducing Malintzin as a feminist emblematic figure trying to regain selfhood within an exploitative White cisheteropatriarchal society, her existence gives voice to those silenced by the violence of colonization, Manhood, and gender oppression. To do this, the author takes up the work of …


Queer Ecologies: A Final Syllabus/Zine Product Of Our Independent Study, Yeh Seo Jung, Ray Craig Jan 2023

Queer Ecologies: A Final Syllabus/Zine Product Of Our Independent Study, Yeh Seo Jung, Ray Craig

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This zine is the product of our independent study course Queer Ecologies, which is an exploration of bio-social systems using a queer and feminist theoretical lens. We aim to look critically at knowledge formation and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable relationships between science, nature, and ourselves. While queer theory most directly interrogates the normative structure of heterosexuality both in humans and in biology more broadly, these studies include analyses of hierarchy, power, and value. Queer Ecology can be used to examine phenomena such as climate change, extinction, pollution, species hierarchies, agricultural practices, resource extraction, and human population …


Female Empowerment And The Preservation Of Local Handicraft Home-Based Industries In Java, Emy Susanti, Siti Mas’Udah, Tri Winarni Soenarto Putri, Anna Fatchiya, Lanny Ramli Dec 2022

Female Empowerment And The Preservation Of Local Handicraft Home-Based Industries In Java, Emy Susanti, Siti Mas’Udah, Tri Winarni Soenarto Putri, Anna Fatchiya, Lanny Ramli

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study demonstrates the central role of women in preserving local cultural handicrafts as a home-based industry and the role of government bodies and stake holders in preserving these cultural handicrafts. The study focuses on five villages located in four regencies on the island of Java. Data collection was obtained through interviews and questionnaires. Over the course of one month data was collected from 258 craftswomen and managers as respondents. The results show the importance of the roles occupied by women within local handicraft industries. These women are often viewed as subordinate to their male counterparts, yet these women are …


Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria Nov 2022

Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Contemporary feminism manifests itself in the form of blogs, hashtags, e-magazines, and digitally planned protests through online communities that address the prevailing concerns of feminists in the digital age. This feminist approach to digital activism aims to reclaim the power of technology which is inherently hegemonic and masculinist by creating alternate spaces and modes of protest. Transnational feminism is increasingly being shaped by online discourses and the new digital space enables social movements in shaping feminist solidarity and complex netizen identities. This paper adopts discourse analysis of online contents that question the prevalent patriarchal system in South Asia and thus …


Two Poems, Mohammad Shafiqul Islam Oct 2022

Two Poems, Mohammad Shafiqul Islam

Journal of International Women's Studies

The poems “Other Fish to Fry” and “Lives of Others” reflect on how South Asian women fall victim to social systems and prejudices about gender. The first poem, “Other Fish to Fry,” metaphorically presents a mother bird and its kids, who represent women suffering from discrimination and torture. “Lives of Others” also depicts women who migrate to Middle Eastern countries in order to earn money and bring solvency to their families. But over time, they are victimized by landlords and brokers who regularly torture them. As a result, both poems address violence against South Asian women, including heinous crimes such …


“Gender At The Root Of Everyday Life”: Equity, Activism, And The Perspectives Of Diana J. Fox, Goutam Karmakar Oct 2022

“Gender At The Root Of Everyday Life”: Equity, Activism, And The Perspectives Of Diana J. Fox, Goutam Karmakar

Journal of International Women's Studies

This in-depth conversation with Diana J. Fox, Professor of Anthropology at Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts, United States, and a cultural and applied anthropologist, scholar-activist, and documentary film producer, puts emphasis on how Fox’s research demonstrates that a decolonial feminist viewpoint inspires and even necessitates that Indigenous feminisms be at the center, and that researchers from the global north have a responsibility to do so. In this interview, Fox talks about how, as a feminist decolonial/anticolonial anthropologist, she has worked for global gender justice and equality throughout her career, especially within the Anglophone Caribbean, which is where the bulk of her …