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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Do Resources Create Empowerment?: A Study Of Tribal Women Farmers In Madhya Pradesh, India, Sudarshan Thakur, Simran Malkan
Do Resources Create Empowerment?: A Study Of Tribal Women Farmers In Madhya Pradesh, India, Sudarshan Thakur, Simran Malkan
Journal of International Women's Studies
As of late, there has been debate about the importance of recognizing women in agriculture as farmers. The demand to be recognized is backed by women’s significant contribution to the household economy. Scholars have attempted to establish a correlation between land ownership and women’s empowerment in agriculture. This is an oversimplification of the situation of women farmers and their empowerment, especially in the context of tribal society where women have better access to and control over community and forest resources. We undertook this study to examine if having land and other resources is a prerequisite for the empowerment of tribal …
Educational Migration And Agency Among Tribal Young Women, Deepika Kumari Meena
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 …
Older Women As Active Online Agents: Diversifying Cultural Conceptions Of “Grannies” Through Social Media, Hanna Varjakoski
Older Women As Active Online Agents: Diversifying Cultural Conceptions Of “Grannies” Through Social Media, Hanna Varjakoski
Journal of International Women's Studies
With the advent of social media, the media environment has become more participatory for its users, making it possible for older adults to produce content for social media and be agential in online spaces. This article observes a group of older women known as Activist Grannies (Aktivistimummot in Finnish) and 60+ Finnish women bloggers who identify as “grannies” to discover what kind of agency social media potentially enables for older women. In addition, this article explores the cultural knowledge produced by older women’s self-representations as activist grannies and “granny bloggers.” I demonstrate that social media offers a space to …
The Madness Of Women As An Illusional Power In Charlotte Brontë’S Jane Eyre And Fadia Faqir’S Pillars Of Salt, Luma Balaa
Journal of International Women's Studies
Historically speaking, women have been associated with madness, be it Medea from Ancient Greece, the medieval trials of the witches of Salem, or so called “hysterical” women in the Victorian era. Even in 21st-century literature, arts, and media, the madness of women is widely discussed and often romanticized. Some women authors employed the madwoman trope to show the effects of patriarchal oppression on women. Other studies have associated women’s madness in literature with subversion. This paper, however, claims that the portrayal of madness in both Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt (1996) is not subversive, …
Bollywood As A Site Of Resistance: Women And Agency In Indian Popular Culture, Sheetal Yadav, Smita Jha
Bollywood As A Site Of Resistance: Women And Agency In Indian Popular Culture, Sheetal Yadav, Smita Jha
Journal of International Women's Studies
This article evaluates the contemporary Indian redefinition of gender norms, subjectivity, and practices by analyzing Bollywood films as a major influence upon its global audiences. This study explores how Indian cinema redefines women’s status and promotes gender-neutral entertainment by harnessing the powerful energies of current movements such as #MeToo. The article closely examines the textual and conceptual features of current women-focused movies like Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga (2019), Thappad (2020), and Paglait (2021). This examination focuses on key insights from popular Bollywood actresses’ critical feminist roles to understand their assertions of women’s power, agency, and equality. Additionally, …
Negotiating Empowerment: Pakistani Women Exercising Agency In Domestic And Public Spheres, Laraib Qureshi, Saadia Abid
Negotiating Empowerment: Pakistani Women Exercising Agency In Domestic And Public Spheres, Laraib Qureshi, Saadia Abid
Journal of International Women's Studies
This article explores women negotiating empowerment in domestic and public spheres as beneficiaries of a women’s empowerment project. While these empowerment interventions are noteworthy, they are also misleading because they ignore the local expressions of agency, where women at home also exercise power and conscious decision-making in their own contexts, just as much as any other working women--which is equally significant when talking about empowerment. We argue that there are other expressions of empowerment that are neglected, trivialized, or unacknowledged by the mainstream discourse. In a similar context, we argue that local women, while understanding the NGO’s definition of empowerment, …
The Role Of Emirati Women During The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Challenges, Suaad Zayed Al-Oraimi
The Role Of Emirati Women During The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Challenges, Suaad Zayed Al-Oraimi
Journal of International Women's Studies
Using a qualitative methodology of personal interviews and participant observation, this research investigates the role of Emirati women in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent impact/challenges. Research participants included female Emirati health care workers and educationists. We observed Emirati families to help better understand the challenges women went through during the pandemic. Contrary to existing narratives about the invisibility, docility, marginalization, victimhood, and dependency of Arab women, this research reveals that Emirati women were able to exercise agency in the fight against the pandemic due to the following factors: longstanding government empowerment of women, a sense of …
Crafted For The Male Gaze: Gender Discrimination In The K-Pop Industry, Liz Jonas
Crafted For The Male Gaze: Gender Discrimination In The K-Pop Industry, Liz Jonas
Journal of International Women's Studies
This paper explores the ways in which the Korean popular music industry has maintained and promoted pre-existing cultural patriarchy. The discussion highlights how seeming opportunity for women to enter the industry has resulted in increased objectification and legitimacy of the domination of the “male gaze.” The paper provides an evaluation of the career, marginalization, and precarity of female music artists (“idols”) both with respect to the issues they face and in comparison, with their male counterparts. The paper addresses how ageism and sexualization in the music industry has influenced and reinforced social norms. The discussion concludes by noting a cultural …
Crafted For The Male Gaze: Gender Discrimination In The K-Pop Industry, Liz Jonas
Crafted For The Male Gaze: Gender Discrimination In The K-Pop Industry, Liz Jonas
Journal of International Women's Studies
This paper explores the ways in which the idol industry portrays male and female bodies through the comparison of idol groups and the dominant ways in which they are marketed to the public. A key difference is the absence or presence of agency. Whereas boy group content may market towards the female gaze, their content is crafted by a largely male creative staff or the idols themselves, affording the idols agency over their choices or placing them in power holding positions. Contrasted, girl groups are marketed towards the male gaze, by a largely male creative staff and with less idols …
Alternative Forms Of Resistance: Afghan Women Negotiating For Change, Sara N. Amin, Nazifa Alizada
Alternative Forms Of Resistance: Afghan Women Negotiating For Change, Sara N. Amin, Nazifa Alizada
Journal of International Women's Studies
In this paper we examine how Afghan women resist, strategize and negotiate family and societal constraints to take advantage of the expanding education and employment opportunities in the post-Taliban era. We focus on how these women exercise agency and what resources they mobilize to maximize their opportunities in the face of potential constraints. We argue that to understand women’s agency and changing gendered power relations in the family, it is crucial to examine every day individual behaviors that deviate from prescribed dominant gender behavior and infuse altered meanings to dominant gendering discourses. Our research highlights that gendered power is partial, …
Unending And Uncertain: Thinking Through A Phenomenological Consideration Of Self-Harm Towards A Feminist Understanding Of Embodied Agency, Veronica Heney
Unending And Uncertain: Thinking Through A Phenomenological Consideration Of Self-Harm Towards A Feminist Understanding Of Embodied Agency, Veronica Heney
Journal of International Women's Studies
Agency has been much discussed in both popular and academic feminist discourse, particularly in the context of empowerment and sexual practices. Following a third-wave emphasis on women’s ability to respect women’s choices and ability to exercise agency free from domination, postmodern feminist scholars have critiqued such a view as thoroughly implicated in discourses of neoliberal individualism and compulsory self-discipline. However, these critiques have not entirely succeeded in providing convincing alternative approaches for incorporating concepts and experiences of change and intentionality within frameworks which emphasise the governmentality of discourses of empowerment. Thus, this essay explores the benefits of shifting the frame …
Violence As A Site Of Women’S Agency In War: The Representation Of Female Militants In Sri Lanka’S Post-War Literature, T. N. K. Meegaswatta
Violence As A Site Of Women’S Agency In War: The Representation Of Female Militants In Sri Lanka’S Post-War Literature, T. N. K. Meegaswatta
Journal of International Women's Studies
The increasing visibility of armed women in violent conflicts in the modern world has unsettled conventional beliefs of inferiority, weakness, innocence, and the resultant fragility and victimhood of women. Although in theory it is possible to conceptualize armed woman and violence as empowerment, in practice, the temporal realities that inevitably haunt any discussion of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorists’ in conflict ridden polarized societies severely curtail the terminology available to frame militancy in general and the ‘terror’ it generates as ‘liberatory’. However, fictional and non-fictional literary work that were published in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s war (1983-2009) between the state forces …
Apology Or No Apology: Indigenous Models Of Subjection And Emancipation In Pakistani Women’S Fiction, Aroosa Kanwal
Apology Or No Apology: Indigenous Models Of Subjection And Emancipation In Pakistani Women’S Fiction, Aroosa Kanwal
Journal of International Women's Studies
This survey paper focuses on Pakistani Anglophone literary narratives that examine the multiple identities of victimized women as opposed to the commonly endorsed essentialist and reductive argument that is too easily conscripted into post-9/11 global discourses surrounding women of colour. In the context of the global hegemony of Western scholarship, my purpose in this paper is to foreground the simultaneous liberation and subjection, centricity and marginality, of Pakistani women. I argue that it is important to situate third world women’s subjection as well as agency in relation to the class, regional, ethnic and religious diversities that inform the degree and …
Narratives Of Agency: Women, Islam, And The Politics Of Economic Participation In Afghanistan, Farhana Rahman
Narratives Of Agency: Women, Islam, And The Politics Of Economic Participation In Afghanistan, Farhana Rahman
Journal of International Women's Studies
This paper analyzes Afghan businesswomen’s experiences and their attempts at engaging in the economic sector, and the manner in which they have navigated political, social, and cultural impediments to build and sustain economic enterprises, to reclaim agency in the post-Taliban era. Through in-depth interviews with three Afghan businesswomen in conjunction with observations of their daily lives, this discussion explores how Afghan businesswomen negotiate between international discourses on women’s employment and work, and hyper-conservative values of Afghan society that prevent women from accessing economic opportunities. The businesswomen highlighted in this paper legitimize their place in economic participation and employment, in many …
Examining Agency In Agriculture: The Feminization Debate In Nepal, Hritika Rana, Mahesh Banskota, Sagar Raj Sharma
Examining Agency In Agriculture: The Feminization Debate In Nepal, Hritika Rana, Mahesh Banskota, Sagar Raj Sharma
Journal of International Women's Studies
This paper examines the nature of the feminization of agriculture, and factors influencing the phenomenon in citrus producing pocket areas of Sindhuli district in Central Nepal. Presenting the intra-household division of work in agriculture among better-off family members in rural farms, emerging themes from narratives of women farmers’ lived-experience as farmers are discussed. Based on the narratives, this paper explores how household members’ everyday lifestyles regarding agriculture and non-agriculture shape their lives differently. Outlining the problematic of gendered agricultural engagement, three in-depth case analyses of farm families have been presented through data collected from narratives and participant observation as part …
South Asian Fiction And Marital Agency Of Muslim Wives, Hafiza Nilofar Khan
South Asian Fiction And Marital Agency Of Muslim Wives, Hafiza Nilofar Khan
Journal of International Women's Studies
This essay deals with the treatment of wifely agency as delineated by three South Asian women writers: Ismat Chughtai, Tehmina Durrani and Selina Hossain. It tries to prove that the Muslim wives as projected in the fiction of these writers from the patriarchal societies of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are not uniformly oppressed victims of socio-religious discourses. Though often their bodies are subjected to rigorous discipline, docility and even battery, these wives still demonstrate sufficient agential powers to resist the status quo and chalk out a fresh trope of identity for themselves. Their domestic agency, sexual agency and decision-making powers, …
The Land Of Lalla-Ded: Politicization Of Kashmir And Construction Of The Kashmiri Woman, Nyla Ali Khan
The Land Of Lalla-Ded: Politicization Of Kashmir And Construction Of The Kashmiri Woman, Nyla Ali Khan
Journal of International Women's Studies
Over the years, tremendous political and social turmoil has been generated in the state of Jammu and Kashmir by the forces of religious fundamentalism and by an exclusionary nationalism that seeks to erode the cultural syncretism that is part of the ethos of Kashmir. Kashmiri women are now suffering from some of the more predictable afflictions of women caught in conflict situations: psychological trauma, destitution, and acute poverty that put them at increased risk of trafficking. The ethnographic field research, which I undertook, was a method of seeking reconnection sans condescension by simultaneously belonging to and resisting the discursive community …
From Discovery To Dissidence: Honduran Women’S Conceptions And Claims Of Human Rights, Christine Gervais
From Discovery To Dissidence: Honduran Women’S Conceptions And Claims Of Human Rights, Christine Gervais
Journal of International Women's Studies
In recognition of the profound benefits of women’s engagement with their rights, this article presents an experiential account of how Honduran women comprehend, articulate, experience and advocate human rights and gender equality through non-governmental educational initiatives. Through the triangulated analytic among human security, post-victimization and citizen-based advocacy approaches, the article traces the women’s journeys from their moments of discovery of human rights towards instances of dissidence. In so doing, the women’s demonstrations of empowerment, agency, resistance and solidarity are brought to the fore. By featuring their voices, this study demonstrates how Honduran women are able to shape their own expectations …
Tension In Intersectional Agency: A Theoretical Discussion Of The Interior Conflict Of White, Feminist Activists’ Intersectional Location, Dieuwertje Dyi Huijg
Tension In Intersectional Agency: A Theoretical Discussion Of The Interior Conflict Of White, Feminist Activists’ Intersectional Location, Dieuwertje Dyi Huijg
Journal of International Women's Studies
In this article I question the wholeness of the agency of white, feminist activists. Drawing on intersectional theory, I problematise the multiplicative character of their location in order to be able to understand how intersectional agency operates. This location reveals three layers of intersectionality; the junction of axes of social signification (gender and race); the junction of manifestations on these axes (female and white); and the junction of, subsequent, positions in power relations (disadvantaged and advantaged). I argue that this is specifically important and complex when we explore how whiteness can operate intersectionally. This results in three observations. First, this …
“We All Like To Think We’Ve Saved Somebody:” Sex Trafficking In Literature, Donna M. Bickford
“We All Like To Think We’Ve Saved Somebody:” Sex Trafficking In Literature, Donna M. Bickford
Journal of International Women's Studies
This essay considers the potential impact of sex trafficking narratives and their relationship to public perception and social change efforts. It fuses literary criticism and cultural analysis to discuss multiple genres of texts, including mainstream news media reports and two categories of novels about sex trafficking. Finally, it argues for the power of narrative to catalyze and influence actions designed to eradicate sex trafficking.