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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
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, …
Gender, Sexuality And Representation In Pakistani Literature: Qandeel Baloch As A Victim Of Honor Killing, Nukhbah Taj Langah, Sumera Umrani
Gender, Sexuality And Representation In Pakistani Literature: Qandeel Baloch As A Victim Of Honor Killing, Nukhbah Taj Langah, Sumera Umrani
Journal of International Women's Studies
The article discusses women’s bodies as victims of violence by regarding gender as a stereotype as compared to a social construct within the context of Pakistan. The primary sources for this analysis are a sample of investigative journalism based on the life of a Pakistani social media figure Qandeel Baloch as depicted in The Sensational Life and Death of Qandeel Baloch (2018) by Sanam Maher. We contend that the conventional expectations of women in Pakistan have resulted in crimes like honor killing. Through textual analysis of Maher’s account, we debate the concept of honor killing within the Pakistani context, with …
Recollecting The Body: Violence And Resistance In The Writings Of A Theatre Actress In Colonial Bengal, Anannya Mitra
Recollecting The Body: Violence And Resistance In The Writings Of A Theatre Actress In Colonial Bengal, Anannya Mitra
Journal of International Women's Studies
Critical interventions by black, third world, and/or postcolonial feminists against the homogenizing tendencies of majoritarian narratives of women have led to the emergence of intersectional feminist scholarship and its endeavour to postulate women’s stories along the interfaces of race, class, caste, and gender hierarchies. Historicizing social and material bodies has been a constant engagement here, resulting in the analysis of symbiotic processes of subject formation and otherization, thereby entailing a confrontation with the heterogeneous nature of violence and its functioning in such processes. Using such scholarship, this article seeks to comprehend the interplay of various forms of violence in the …
After Violence: Dalit Women’S Narratives And The Possibilities Of Resistance, Anandita Pan
After Violence: Dalit Women’S Narratives And The Possibilities Of Resistance, Anandita Pan
Journal of International Women's Studies
The history of feminist criticism has undergone a long trajectory where it gets written in terms of difference and sameness. Such anxieties get written in the Indian scenario with reference to the “caste” question. The predominant constructions of “woman” and “Dalit” give prominence to savarna women and Dalit men. As such, the mutuality of caste and gender is unaddressed. The intersectional identity of Dalit women, simultaneously affected by caste and patriarchy, has challenged this homogeneity claimed by mainstream Indian feminism and Dalit politics. Dalit feminism provides a critique of Brahmanism implicit in mainstream feminism, and the reproduction of patriarchal norms …
Double Bind Of Muslim Women’S Activism In Pakistan: Case Of Malala Yousafzai And Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Naila Sahar
Double Bind Of Muslim Women’S Activism In Pakistan: Case Of Malala Yousafzai And Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Naila Sahar
Journal of International Women's Studies
A majority of Western feminist studies has dealt with women from the third world as a homogenous entity of poor and passive victims without agency, who need saving and thus need to be spoken for. Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have both underscored the urgency of seeing and dealing with third world feminism in terms of a genre that is different in socio-cultural background from Western dynamics, and they emphasize the importance of being wary of the ways in which Western feminism creates the 'discursive homogenization and systematization of the oppression of women in the Third World' (Mohanty, …
Understanding Women’S English Writings As A Paradigm Of Resistance, Mudassir Ali Shah, Humaira Riaz
Understanding Women’S English Writings As A Paradigm Of Resistance, Mudassir Ali Shah, Humaira Riaz
Journal of International Women's Studies
Women face numerous political, economic, cultural, and religious barriers in the world. To remove the barriers, fight for survival, and pave their way for development, women show resistance in politics, legislation, literature, theatre, songs, marches, art, sports, movies, and seminars. The previous studies have explored patriarchy as the best reason for women's resistance to fight against male-domination, ideological divisions, policies, traditions and cultures, and religion to claim their individual identity and equality. The present study demonstrates the role of literature in awakening society and explores how writing helps in resistance and maintains the struggle of liberation for the vulnerable section …
Repression And Resistance: Negotiation Between Motherhood And Labour Force Participation By Igbo Women, Alka Vishwakarma
Repression And Resistance: Negotiation Between Motherhood And Labour Force Participation By Igbo Women, Alka Vishwakarma
Journal of International Women's Studies
Focusing on the maternal and trading roles as conflicting and complementing, this article explores the female labour force of Igbo women in rural and urban Nigeria. The majority of Igbo women contribute to local trade by carrying on various types of activities, studies have shown that approximate 45.5 % (World Bank 2019) of the Nigerian labour force is women; they either participate in farm activities or carry petty business. 73.15% of women are engaged in farm activities while 26.85 % are in the non-farm activities. Labour force participation in trade activities is challenging; women are marginalized and limited in their …
From Resistance To Leadership: The Role Of The Women In Cinema Collective (Wcc) In ‘Voicing The Women’ In The Malayalam Film Industry, Jimin S. Mathew, Alna Mariya Isac
From Resistance To Leadership: The Role Of The Women In Cinema Collective (Wcc) In ‘Voicing The Women’ In The Malayalam Film Industry, Jimin S. Mathew, Alna Mariya Isac
Journal of International Women's Studies
On February 17, 2017 a popular film actress in the Malayalam film industry was sexually assaulted and harassed in a running vehicle as she was returning from work. A group of women came together as a collective to support the survivor and to address some of the problems plaguing women in the film industry. The heinous crime was a blow to the conscience of the state of Kerala which is considered the most educated and well governed state with better living conditions, when compared to all the other states in India. It revealed the long silenced and unquestioned reality of …
Moving Beyond Controversy: A Cross-Cultural Genre And Gender Study Of Rigoberta’S Testimonio I, Rigoberta Menchú And Malala’S Memoir I Am Malala, Asmaa Mansour
Journal of International Women's Studies
The two women Nobel Prize winners Rigoberta Menchú and Malala Yousafzai and their “bestselling” books have stirred numerous controversies over the past few years. The credibility of both writers is questioned and their books have not achieved much fame in their own countries (Guatemala and Pakistan, respectively) compared to Western countries. Rigoberta is blamed for representing “all” indigenous people, and Malala is accused of misrepresenting Islam and enhancing the West’s stereotypical assumptions about Muslim women as oppressed. While Rigoberta is accused of attacking the Guatemalan government, Malala is accused of inviting the “Western saviors” to come to post-9/11 Pakistan and …
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, …
Middle Eastern Women Between Oppression And Resistance: Case Studies Of Iraqi, Palestinian And Kurdish Women Of Turkey, Yasmin Khodary, Noha Salah, Nada Mohsen
Middle Eastern Women Between Oppression And Resistance: Case Studies Of Iraqi, Palestinian And Kurdish Women Of Turkey, Yasmin Khodary, Noha Salah, Nada Mohsen
Journal of International Women's Studies
Wars and conflicts have had a profound impact on women and gender in the Middle East. In this article, we aim to highlight the various ways in which the ongoing oppression and conflict in the Middle East shape the responses of the Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish women of Turkey and the object of their struggles. We go beyond the ‘Orientalist’ discourse, which depicts Middle Eastern women in armed conflicts as solely vulnerable and helpless victims, to discuss the resisting roles played by the Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish women of Turkey. Middle Eastern women have played and continue to play major …
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, …
Re-Visioning Science Education, Ingrid Bartsch
Re-Visioning Science Education, Ingrid Bartsch
Journal of International Women's Studies
Science education is crucial for shaping the culture of science and its practitioners. Boundaries currently limit ties between natural and social science education structures, exposing the public to a one-dimensional science and its possible ramifications. Believing this to be a “crisis,” I explore a variety of approaches to re-visioning science education and the ensuing forms of resistance that these face. In addition, a more personal accounting of my experience with trying to integrate social and cultural issues into the education of scientists allows me to explore the forms of resistance I faced; bridge the gap between theory and practice; and …
Social Fora: Representing Resistance And Alternatives? Critique And Alternative Interpretation From A Feminist Perspective, Magdalena Freudenschuss
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 …
Flowers, Queens, And Goons: Unruly Women In Rural Pakistan, Lubna N. Chaudhry
Flowers, Queens, And Goons: Unruly Women In Rural Pakistan, Lubna N. Chaudhry
Journal of International Women's Studies
This article focuses on girls and women perceived as deviant, difficult, or different by their communities in rural Punjab, even as it pluralizes and historicizes performances of rebellious, unruly selves. Specifically, the paper uses fieldwork interactions with girls who enjoyed wanderings in out-of-bound spaces, women who claimed a position of authority as headmistresses in village schools, and women who troubled the social imaginary through their acts of intimidation and involvement in local politics in order to examine defiance of gendered norms within the context of material, structural, and discursive realities framing individual lives. The analysis illustrates how regional differences among …
Palestinian Women’S Everyday Resistance: Between Normality And Normalisation, Sophie Richter-Devroe
Palestinian Women’S Everyday Resistance: Between Normality And Normalisation, Sophie Richter-Devroe
Journal of International Women's Studies
The paper traces Palestinian women’s understandings, practices and framings of everyday resistance. Women’s resistance acts consist of both materially-based survival strategies and various coping strategies at the ideational level. Focusing on the latter, this study investigates women’s practices of travelling to create (a sense of) normal joyful life for themselves, their families, friends and community with the aim of shedding light upon the complex and mutually constitutive interplay between women’s agency and the various social and political power structures. It is argued that Palestinian women, although framing their acts of crossing Israeli-imposed physical restriction as acts of resistance against the …
Gendered Performance Performing Gender In The Diy Punk And Hardcore Music Scene, Naomi Griffin
Gendered Performance Performing Gender In The Diy Punk And Hardcore Music Scene, Naomi Griffin
Journal of International Women's Studies
This article considers the relevance of geographical theories about gender roles and how gender is performed, to the situated context of a local DIY (‘Do It Yourself) punk scene. It draws on an auto-ethnographic study carried out by the author between September 2008 and May 2009, which explored the themes of the body, gendered performativity and gendered spatialities. The study was based on the author’s observations, reflections and conversations with other participants at live music events (‘shows’) in a particular region of the UK, but also revealed how DIY punk offers an example of an imagined community, crossing temporal, spatial …
Gender And Conflict Transformation In Israel/Palestine, Simona Sharoni
Gender And Conflict Transformation In Israel/Palestine, Simona Sharoni
Journal of International Women's Studies
A careful examination of women’s involvement in peacebuilding and conflict transformation in Israel and Palestine provides a unique perspective on key turning points in the history of the conflict in the past two and one-half decades, since the first Palestinian uprising, knows as the Intifada. The article analyzes the changes in modes of organizing, as well as in the broader vision and key strategies of women’s organizing, mostly at the grassroots level, on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide. By exposing the gendered dimensions of the conflict, women activists have began to transform the cultures of their respective collectivities, …