Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

“Valli” At The Border: Adivasi Women De-Link From Settler Colonialism Paving Re-Enchantment Of The Forest Commons, Deepa Kozhisseri

Journal of International Women's Studies

The forests of Attappady Hills part of the Western Ghats in Kerala homeland to Adivasi people is a frontier region where a settler population is now predominant. This paper aims to bring the concept of borders as a heuristic device to interpret gender-ecology-indigeneity in Attappady. The conversations among Adivasis, between Adivasis and settlers, between Adivasi women and their children become in media res dialogues of their border subjectivity. This was an empirical study in Attappady in which life experiences, oral history and myths were studied using narrative analysis. The paper discusses four findings: First how land dispossession disproportionately impacted Adivasi …

Women’S Representation In The Turkish Parliament: An Analysis Of Cedaw Committee Documents, Sinem Yargıç

Journal of International Women's Studies

According to article 7 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), States parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that women enjoy equality with men in political and public life. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) declares in its General Recommendation No. 23 that while removal of de jure barriers is necessary, it is not sufficient to achieve full and equal participation of women in political and public life.

That is why under article 4 of CEDAW, the CEDAW Committee encourages adoption by States …

Efforts To Eradicate Child Marriage Practices In Indonesia: Towards Sustainable Development Goals, Sonny D. Judiasih, Betty Rubiati, Deviana Yuanitasari, Elycia F. Salim, Levana Safira

Journal of International Women's Studies

Child marriage in Indonesia is a reality recurring within society. Religious and customary laws often become the basis to legitimize the practices of child marriage. According to UNICEF in 2016, Indonesia ranked the seventh in the world and the second in ASEAN for the highest rate of child marriage. Child marriage is a manifestation of gender inequality, especially for female. Indonesia, as one of the member countries of the United Nations (UN), has ratified the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) program issued by the UN to eradicate the practice of child marriage occurring within the society. One of …

Learning From ‘The Outsider Within’: The Sociological Significance Of Dalit Women’S Life Narratives, Bhushan Sharma, Anurag Kumar

Journal of International Women's Studies

Dalit women have long occupied marginal positions and been excluded from two major Indian social movements: The Feminist Movement and the Dalit Movement. The researcher examines how Dalit women have made creative use of their marginality—their ‘outsider-within' status—and have represented their lived experiences. The study scrutinizes select life narratives of Dalit women writers: Bama's Sangati: Events (2005), Urmila Pawar’s The Weave of My Life (2015), and Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke (2008) to discuss and explore the sociological significance of three characteristic themes in these narratives: (1) the interlocking nature of Dalit women’s oppression, (2) endurance and …

The Communal Violence Bill: Women’S Bodies As Repositories Of Communal Honour, Zara Ismail

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines the measures taken under the various iterations of India’s Communal Violence Bill to tackle sexual violence in communally charged areas. It focuses on the 2002 violence in Gujarat to illustrate ‘sexual impunity’ in India, the workings of izzat (honour) within the discourse around communal violence, and to argue that citizens of India are not always equal before the law. Using decolonial, feminist and postcolonial theory, the author builds on a rich history of activism and scholarship to argue that not only are the measures proposed under the government’s draft of the Communal Violence Bill inadequate, but also …

Liminal Space And Minority Communities In Kate O’Brien’S Mary Lavelle (1936), Amy Finlay-Jeffrey

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite blatant references to homoerotic desire in Kate O’Brien’s oeuvre — two of her novels Mary Lavelle (1936) and As Music and Splendour (1958) contain lesbian characters, whilst gay male characters appear in Without my Cloak (1931) and The Land of Spices (1941) — it is only in recent years that scholarship has considered O’Brien as a writer of homosexual themes. There are obvious reasons as to why the lesbianism in O’Brien’s work and others who wrote about it during the mid-twentieth century has suffered from such neglect. It is only since second-wave feminism that an academic critique of sexuality …