Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Women In The 1919 Egyptian Revolution: From Feminist Awakening To Nationalist Political Activism, Nabila Ramdani

Journal of International Women's Studies

The formation of a feminist consciousness in Egypt ran parallel with the country’s rapid development as a modern state at the start of the 19th century. Technological advancements within Muhammad Ali’s increasingly capitalistic, secular country were accompanied by burgeoning intellectual thought among all sections of society, including women. By the end of the century, a middle-class female literary culture had become indelibly associated with a nationwide feminist awakening.

The feminist element to the wider independence movement was both vocal and powerful, as women rallied under the ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’ slogan. Elite women who had organised themselves politically had first …

Literacy, Womanism And Struggle: Reflections On The Practices Of An African Woman, Nombuso Dlamini

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Essay:

As I begin writing about the importance of, and interconnections among literacy, womanism and struggle, I feel myself drawn enthusiastically to treasured memories of my mother’s life and the influence she has had in shaping my theoretical and professional undertakings. Going back into my childhood, I can surely categorize my mother then as having been a literacy worker as she taught at an elementary school, a womanist because of her concern for and actions about issues of women equity, and a political activist because of her struggles against apartheid. My interest here is in tracing a …

Facing The Medusa: Confronting The Ongoing Impossibility Of Women’S Studies, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Laura Gillman

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

When feminism is defined in such a way that it calls attention to the diversity of women’s social and political reality, it centralizes the experiences of all women, especially the women whose social conditions have been least written about, studied, or changed by political movements. When we cease to focus on this simplistic stance “men are the enemy,” we are compelled to examine systems of domination and our role in their maintenance and perpetuation. Lack of adequate definition made it easy for bourgeois women, whether liberal or radical in perspective, to maintain their dominance over the leadership …

Generations, Feminist Beliefs And Abortion Rights Support, Terri Susan Fine

Journal of International Women's Studies

Do forces that impacted feminist beliefs in the past, such as gender and generation, impact feminist beliefs today within the context of abortion policy support? While the abortion rights issue was framed during the feminist movement era as a feminist issue, it is now clearly framed along partisan and ideological lines. Public opinion on issues that percolated through the feminist movement and identified as feminist issues in the past may no longer be viewed as feminist issues today. The abortion rights issue was chosen because of the oft-held perception that it is solely a women’s issue. The strong association of …

Oral History, Identity, And The Italian Women’S Movement In The Future Of The Contemporary Past, Wendy Pojmann

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this essay, I reflect on the use of oral history and participant observation as tools for researchers of the contemporary past. I want to argue that these approaches must, as Nietzsche has stated, “serve life” by pushing traditional guidelines and by considering the rich cultural fabrics not recorded in oral or written form. Feminist scholars must experiment with methodologies that allow them to consider identities by continually reflecting on their own. But, they should neither become trapped by the narrow definitions of identity politics nor indulge solely in personal exploration.

I first discuss briefly the relationship of oral history …

‘Starving Children In Africa’: Who Cares?, Lisa Cassidy

Journal of International Women's Studies

The current state of global poverty presents citizens in the Global North with a moral crisis: Do we care? In this essay, I examine two competing moral accounts of why those in the North should or should not give care (in the form of charity) to impoverished peoples in the Global South. Nineteen years ago feminist philosopher Nel Noddings wrote in Caring that “we are not obliged to care for starving children in Africa” (1986, p. 86). Noddings’s work belongs to the arena of care ethics – the feminist philosophical view that morality is about responding to, caring for, and …

A Conversation With Onyango Oloo At The Wsf Nairobi 2007, Patricia Willis, Onyango Oloo

Journal of International Women's Studies

Onyango Oloo, National Coordinator for the Kenyan Social Forum 2006 and who also served on the Nairobi Organizing Council for the World Social Forum Nairobi 2007, has gained notoriety as an outspoken advocate for women’s leadership at the World Social Forum. His widely circulated article, “Gendering WSF Nairobi 2007 - Conceptual Underpinnings,” raised expectations among some readers about the role women would play at the Nairobi forum. In this interview, completed in the midst of that event, Onyango reflects on the evolution of his own feminist consciousness and the tactics he feels need to be implemented in order to infuse …

“Otro Mundo Es Posible”: Women Power In The Vi Caracas World Social Forum And The Bolivarian Revolution, Renée Kasinsky

Journal of International Women's Studies

This is an insider’s account of the participation of a Boston delegate at the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela in January 2006. She relates the stories of women who attended the WSF and those women who through their leadership in their communities create a new world order based on the major themes of the WSF. The health and welfare missions created by the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chávez are testimony to the theme of the forum that through the process of participatory democracy “Otro Mundo Es Posible”.

Transnational Feminisms And The World Social Forum: Encounters And Transformations In Anti-Globalization Spaces, Janet Conway

Journal of International Women's Studies

What would it mean to place feminism(s) – as movement(s), politics and ethics – at the centre of our understandings of the World Social Forum? The author argues that transnational feminisms have been among the significant forces constituting the WSF, although this has been uneven across different time-spaces and scales of the WSF. She further asserts that transnational feminisms, understood as movement(s), politics and ethics, are making particular and irreducible contributions to contemporary emancipatory movements in and beyond the WSF. This study historicizes and analyzes some major expressions of transnational feminism at the WSF with implications for understanding the inter-relationality …

Social Fora: Representing Resistance And Alternatives? Critique And Alternative Interpretation From A Feminist Perspective, Magdalena Freudenschuss

Journal of International Women's Studies

The World Social Forum is only one in the worldwide process of social fora, which mark a new phase in the era of globalisation. This critical form of globalisation from below challenges neoliberal hegemony and sets up a space to develop alternatives symbolised by the Forum’s motto, “Another World is Possible.” Collectively, the fora make up a part of the forces of global resistance, but in a more concrete way, opinions on resulting strategies and aims diverge concerning the foras’ character and function. At the same time, criticism is formulated inside the fora, leading to heavy debates. Among these critiques …

The Female Body In Margaret Atwood’S The Edible Woman And Lady Oracle, Sofia Sanchez-Grant

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay examines scholarly discourses about embodiment, and their increasing scholarly currency, in relation to two novels by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. Like many of Atwood’s other works, The Edible Woman (1969) and Lady Oracle (1976) are explicitly concerned with the complexities of body image. More specifically, however, these novels usefully exemplify her attempt to demystify the female form. In the following pages, I investigate Atwood’s treatment of the mind/body dualism and analyse the ways in which she responds to, and resists, its destructive effects. Using contemporary theory, moreover, I show how Atwood deals with the concept of female …

Body And The Text/Body Of The Text In Mina Loy’S Songs To Joannes, Lucia Pietroiusti

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay advances a close reading of Mina Loy’s Songs to Joannes, a sequence of poems dedicated to her failed relationship with the futurist Giovanni Papini and published in 1917. Through a close analysis of the typographical complexities by which Songs to Joannes is characterized, I attempt to draw explicit connections between Loy’s radical approach to physical existence and sexual activity in the poems, and her equally radical departure from the conventions of poetic form. In the systematic tension between form and content, then, I illuminate the ways in which Loy’s poetry redefines the familiar concept of the ‘body …

A Feminist Struggle? South African Hiv Activism As Feminist Politics, Katarina Jungar, Elina Oinas

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper is a feminist reading of HIV activism in South Africa, of a social movement that does not describe itself as a women’s movement: it advocates both women’s and men’s, trans, hetero- and homosexual peoples’ rights for adequate health care and antiretroviral medication. Like many others, Chandra Talpade Mohanty suggests that today’s powerful feminism is found in anti-globalization movements that do not necessarily call themselves feminist. These critiques maintain that the theory, critique and activism of grass-root women across the globe, for example around anti-globalization, should also inform academic feminist discussions. This article studies discourses on HIV in Africa …

Contradiction And The Role Of The ‘Floating Signifier’: Identity And The ‘New Woman’ In Italian Cartoons During Fascism, Efharis Mascha

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper addresses the issue of political cartooning during Italian fascism, with specific reference to the role of women, as it is symbolised in the cartoons (i.e.the woman-mother/care-taker/fascist/worker). The latter will be revealed through a careful study of the contradictions generated by fascism and the representation of this ‘New Woman’ in political satire. The caricatures I will examine belong strictly to the Left discourse. They received high circulation figures and characterised Italy’s popular culture during the 1920’s. Whilst fascism did not provide any space for women to join the high ranks of the PNF (Partito Nazionale Fascista), the Left similarly …

Sexual-Political Colonialism And Failure Of Individuation In Doris Lessing’S The Grass Is Singing, Sima Aghazadeh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article presents and interprets Doris Lessing’s first novel, The Grass is Singing (1950), as both a personal and psychological portrayal of its female protagonist, Mary Turner, from her childhood to death, and as a political exposure of the futility and fragility of the patriarchal and colonial society. This novel is Mary’s failure of individuation in the confrontation of her psychological and cultural parts, shaped by colonial experience. Lessing, by depicting her protagonist in a particular British colonial setting, artistically reveals that her identity is negotiated and constructed by the social and behavioral expectations, developed through her racial role as …