Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Limiting Queer Reproduction In Hungary, Judit Takács

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article discusses several limiting factors that affect queer reproduction desires and practices in present-day Hungary, including distorting media representations, legislative frameworks, and social inequalities. It draws on relevant legal developments and results from previous research studies. The article focuses on how Hungarian LGBTQI people can resist the social norms and policies of heteronormatively prescribed childlessness resulting from normative expectations that non-heteronormative reproduction must be limited as much as possible, and highlights that better-off couples and individuals have more chance to realize their fertility plans through adoption, surrogacy or accessing ART than those in a more disadvantageous situation. In this …

Negotiating Access To Assisted Reproduction Technologies In A Post-Socialist Heteronormative Context, Hana Hašková, Zdeněk Sloboda

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article centres on the impact of heteronormativity on the ways in which parental desires, intentions and practices of lesbian, gay, or trans people in Czechia are subjected to barriers. It explores heteronormativity by analysing how access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for non-straight couples (including single women) has been negotiated. We discuss discrimination against, and the statistical marginalisation of, homoparental families; the fact that same-sex Czech couples are not yet allowed to marry and that instead a new legal institution, the civil union, was introduced exclusively for them, explicitly prohibiting them from forming parental couples; the political disregard of …

Unfit For Parenthood? Compulsory Sterilization And Transgender Reproductive Justice In Finland, Julian Honkasalo

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines the rationale of the continuing Finnish transgender sterilization requirement against the background of reproductive justice. I examine how and why the Finnish public debate on removing the sterilization clause from the Trans Act does not include an equal demand to 1) include a parental law reform and 2) a legislation on accessible, affordable and just reproductive health care for transgender persons and (cis)women alike. I will argue that since the citizens’ initiative of the marriage equality legislation in Finland was followed by another citizens’ initiative to reform the Maternity Act to include lesbian couples, transgender reproductive justice …

Unlearning Cisnormativity In The Clinic: Enacting Transgender Reproductive Rights In Everyday Patient Encounters, Theo Erbenius, Jenny Gunnarsson Payne

Journal of International Women's Studies

In recent years, transgender reproduction has become increasingly visible in public debates in Sweden. Heated debates and years of activism and advocacy ultimately led to a change in law in 2013. In the new law, the previously controversial demands for patients to be unmarried and sterile had been removed from the legal framework. As a consequence, transgender patients also became entitled to fertility preservation through assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). This gave rise to a new patient group of fertility patients with specific medical and psychosocial needs.

Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with healthcare professionals in a Stockholm clinic for reproductive …

Queer And Trans Access To Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Comparison Of Three Eu-States, Poland, Spain And Sweden, Doris Leibetseder

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article is about the legal challenges and difficulties of queer and trans reproduction with ART in three purposely selected European states: Sweden, Poland and Spain, representing the north, east and west of Europe. Isabell Engeli and Christine Rothmayr Allison’s (2017) continuum model of classifying countries according to their permissive, intermediate or restrictive regulations for ART access serves as an example how a national comparative analysis on ART policies is established. However, this framework needs to be adjusted to address the regulations pertaining to queer and trans people’s reproductive, parenthood, and partnership opportunities. Thus, the queer and trans model I …

Introduction: Queer And Trans Reproduction With Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Art), In Europe, Doris Leibetseder, Gabriele Griffin

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Film Review: Women In Iranian Cinema: Moving Beyond Conventional Legends, Bahar Davary

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of the film Under the Smoky Roof; Pouran Derakhshandeh (director). 2017

Book Review: Women And Death In Film, Television, And News, Jarice Hanson

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Women and Death in Film, Television, and News by Joanne Clarke Dillman.

Book Review: Women In Twentieth-Century Africa, Serena J. Rivera

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, by Iris Berger. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Book Review: Gender (In)Equality And Gender Politics In Southeastern Europe: A Question Of Justice, Meltem Ince-Yenilmez

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Gender (In)equality and Gender Politics in Southeastern Europe: A Question of Justice, edited by Christine Hassenstab & Sabrina P. Ramet. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Book Review: Balzac’S Cane, Randi M. Rezendes

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Balzac’s Cane by Delphine de Girardin. Peter Lang, 2017

Epistemology Revisited: A Feminist Critique, Anupam Yadav

Journal of International Women's Studies

The Platonic legacy of Western epistemology has been severely attacked for its dominant exclusivist and coercive rationality in the discourses of anti-foundationalism and anti-representationalism, which have also given rise to several alternative epistemologies. The feminist discourse challenges the exclusivist and appropriationist logic of Western epistemology, or science, for being highly gender-biased and oppressive. Weininger’s remark that ‘No woman is really interested in science, she may deceive herself and many good men, but bad psychologists, by thinking so’ is one of such silencing masculine diktats that have deeper roots in the sexist, racist and classist biases. The feminists’ revolts against the …

Inequality Analyses Of Gendering Jordanian Citizenship And Legislative Rights, Rania F. Al-Rabadi, Anas N. Al-Rabadi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Awareness has been recently increased about gender-based rights and citizenship in Jordan. Many of the issues concerning gender equality arise in the private sphere. Therefore, focusing on the politics of family law is important with regards to women’s rights in particular. Family law is the law related to matters such as polygamy, divorce, inheritance, child custody, guardianship and obedience. The effects are observed especially when Jordanian women try to exercise their granted constitutional political rights. It is the family (personal status) law that runs individual affairs within the private sphere in a patriarchal society where it affects also on exercising …

Gender Mainstreaming And Gender Policies In Contemporary Taiwan, Doris T. Chang

Journal of International Women's Studies

In 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (hereafter referred to as the Platform for Action) promulgated during the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women called for the use of gender mainstreaming as a strategy in policy formulations for pursuing the goals of gender equality. Feminist leaders of NGOs who joined the Taiwanese government in the mid-1990s were strategically positioned to contribute to policy formulations that would integrate gender-mainstreaming perspectives into policies and institutions in the Taiwanese government. Among the various approaches to gender-mainstreaming, taking positive actions to set pro-women policy agendas have been the predominant approach deployed …

Family-Work Conflict And Performance Of Women-Owned Enterprises: The Role Of Social Capital In Developing Countries--Implications For South Africa And Beyond, Ngek Brownhilder Neneh

Journal of International Women's Studies

One critical issue that is highly overlooked in developing regions is the family embeddedness of women entrepreneurs, even though the women in developing countries simultaneously hold several roles in the family and their businesses. As such, this study focused on evaluating the impact of family-work conflict (FWC) on the performance of women-owned businesses in a developing world context. The findings indicate that FWC negatively influenced the performance of women-owned businesses. Additionally, the moderating effect of social capital in this association was examined. The findings suggest that both bonding social capital and bridging social capital buffers the negative effect of FWC …

Using A Model Of Economic Solvency To Understand The Connection Between Economic Factors And Intimate Partner Violence, Heidi Gilroy, Judith Mcfarlane, Nina Fredland, Sandra Cesario, Angeles Nava, John Maddoux

Journal of International Women's Studies

Poverty is a risk factor for intimate partner violence (IPV); however, little is known about the economic state at which women are no longer at risk for IPV due to their economic status, which is economic solvency. A Model of Economic Solvency in women has been developed from the literature that includes four factors: human capital, social capital, sustainable employment, and independence. The purpose of this research is to validate the model in a sample of women reporting IPV. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the model using data from 280 abused women. Examination of the model yielded …

How Children Of Lgbq Parents Negotiate Courtesy Stigma Over The Life Course, Rebecca Dibennardo, Abigail Saguy

Journal of International Women's Studies

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 28 U.S. adults who have at least one lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (LGBQ) parent, we examine how this group negotiates the courtesy stigma of a parent’s sexual identity over the life course. Respondents reported less control over revealing courtesy stigma during childhood, when they were closely linked to their parents, but increased ability to conceal parents’ sexual orientation as they aged. During childhood and adolescence, parents’ gender presentation and choice of partner(s) impacted the visibility and degree of courtesy stigma, as did their peer networks and social environments. As adults, respondents continued to face …

Exploring Women’S Perspectives Of Family Planning: A Qualitative Study From Rural Papua New Guinea, Sari Andajani-Sutjahjo, Zuabe Manguruc Tinning, John F. Smith

Journal of International Women's Studies

Papua New Guinea has one of the highest fertility rates and lowest usage rates of modern contraceptives in the Pacific, especially in rural areas. Provision of modern family planning services in rural indigenous communities is challenged by geographic distance, organizational logistics, sparse human service resourcing issues, and lack of integration and understanding of the diversity of PNG’s indigenous knowledge and practices around reproductive health. Face-to-face interviews followed by two focus group discussions were held with 14 purposively sampled indigenous women and two community volunteers, aiming to explore their experiences of what were termed “modern family planning practices” and the perceived …

Speaking And Silence As Means Of Resistance In Alifa Rifaat's Distant View Of A Minaret And Bahiyya's Eyes, Sumaya M. Alhaj Mohammad

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study aims at investigating the dilemma of creating a counter discourse that speaks against the dominant androcentric one in Alifa Rifaat’s fiction. The study explores the characterization of the protagonists of two short stories: “Distant View of a Minaret” and “Bahiyya’s Eyes,” culled from Rifaat’s collection Distant View of a Minaret and Other Short Stories (1983). These stories present two different paradigms of resistance that the female protagonists use, which are speaking and silence. The study argues that both speaking and silence are attempts to heal women’s cyclic trauma, as they are means of representing women’s experience and oppression …

Similarities And Contrasts Of The Culture Of Women’S “Otherness” In English And Persian Languages: Analysis Of Bhutto's Daughter Of The East, Mahboubeh Hosseini Daragheh, Vida Rahiminezhad

Journal of International Women's Studies

Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex portrayed how the concepts of Self and Other are being shaped, created or reinforced in a text. The concept of Otherness is portrayed conspicuously in Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography entitled Daughter of the East. Benazir Bhutto was the first democratically elected female leader of Pakistan and she was assassinated in December 2007. Bhutto talked about her personal life, strength and her political activity in the twentieth century. Alireza Ayari translated this autobiography into Persian in 2009. The purpose of this study is to examine the concept of women’s Otherness in Daughter of the East …

El Saadawi Does Not Orientalize The Other In Woman At Point Zero, Luma Balaa

Journal of International Women's Studies

El Saadawi’s work in translation has been widely read in the West. On the one hand, she has been criticized for writing for the West, and many Arab critics argue that El Saadawi is famous in the West not because she “champions women’s rights, but because she tells western readers what they want to hear” (Amireh, 1996). In addition, when Woman at Point Zero is taught in the Western classroom, some students, reviewers, and critics tend at times to read the novel as a window “onto a timeless Islam instead of as [a] literary [work] governed by certain conventions and …

Vulnerabilities Of Women Workers In The Readymade Garment Sector Of Bangladesh: A Case Study Of Rana Plaza, Humayun Kabir, Myfanwy Maple, Syadani Riyad Fatema

Journal of International Women's Studies

The Bangladeshi readymade garment (RMG) sector is an important feature of the country’s economic development, as it is the highest contributor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Bangladesh. This industry initiated a revolution in the employment sector particularly through involving women in the workplace, in a culture where employment of women remains rare. While offering new opportunities to women, this sector has failed to ensure a secure and safe working environment for female employees. Consequently, women workers are vulnerable to multiple hazards, frequent disasters, and adverse occupational health outcomes. These vulnerabilities have become a prime concern for national and international …

Intersectionality And An Intra-Household Analysis Of The Freedom To Make Decisions On The Use Of Household Products: Evidence From Rural Tanzania, Christina Mwivei Shitima

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study uses intra-household and intersectionality theories to analyze the relative benefit that household member’s gain from the use of goods produced by households living along the Simiyu River in Tanzania’s Meatu District. The ability to benefit from the use of goods produced by a household is defined as the freedom that a person has concerning decision-making about the goods that are produced within the household. Data were collected from different household members, including household heads, spouses and children who were 18 years and older and who were involved in the production of goods. The study findings highlight that the …

Biblical Moral Inquest Into Tradition Of Suspicion Of Treachery On African Women Upon Husband’S Death, Magezi Elijah Baloyi

Journal of International Women's Studies

The 16 days which South Africa dedicates to the fight against the abuse of women and children every December is a reminder of the effects of gender inequalities in this country. Even though this suspicion is inferred to other family members like parents, brothers or other relatives, this study confines itself to the suspicion towards wives when their husbands have died. This has resulted in widows being targeted in many African communities. Harmful traditional practices are part of the plights that widows are compelled to undergo if ‘suspected’ to prove their innocence. It is therefore the intention of this article …

Undoing The ‘Madwoman’: A Minor History Of Uselessness, Dementia And Indenture In Colonial Fiji, Margaret Mishra

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article sets out to undo colonial constructions of the ‘madwoman’ in Fiji during the indenture period. It will critique how lunacy, or more specifically the condition of dementia, was sometimes presented as the colonial response to ‘uselessness’ in the sugarcane plantations. When archival fragments relating to an indentured woman named Dhurma, are retrieved and situated within a historical context they demonstrate how unproductivity was perceived as a signifier of an ‘unsound mind’ because it conflicted with the utilitarian logic of universal and individual economic advancement espoused by the British colonial administration. The article will also present brief accounts of …

The War On Terror Is A War On Women: The Impact Of Terrorism And Counter-Terrorism On Women's Education In Swat, Khyber Pukhtunkhwah (Pakistan), Shabana Shamaas Gul Khattak

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article was derived from the author’s Postdoctoral Study, ‘The War on Terror is a War on Women in Swat Valley: Women’s Education under Terror and Displacement (2006-2011). Women’s education was affected the most during periods of terrorism in Swat Valley. The main targets of the militants were women’s educational institutes. The situation further worsened when the state government launched military operations in the name of the war on terror (counter-terrorism), which forced a huge number of local inhabitants to leave the valley and utterly blocked their educational accessibility for a long time. This study addresses how those women …

Defying Marginalization: Emergence Of Women’S Organizations And The Resistance Movement In Pakistan: A Historical Overview, Rahat Imran, Imran Munir

Journal of International Women's Studies

In the wake of Pakistani dictator General-Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization process (1977-1988), the country experienced an unprecedented tilt towards religious fundamentalism. This initiated judicial transformations that brought in rigid Islamic Sharia laws that impacted women’s freedoms and participation in the public sphere, and gender-specific curbs and policies on the pretext of implementing a religious identity. This suffocating environment that eroded women’s rights in particular through a recourse to politicization of religion also saw the emergence of equally strong resistance, particularly by women who, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, grouped and mobilized an organized activist women’s movement to challenge Zia’s oppressive …

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 …

Gendered Portrayals Of Domestic Work In Indian Television, Ruby Jain, Surbhi Pareek

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite the entry of women into the labour force in India, women still participate in paid employment at a low rate; the rate even fell recently from 31% to 24% (ILO, 2013). This represents an alarming need for change in gender roles. The present article focuses on how electronic media content portrays men’s and women’s roles in performing housework. In a study of 30 TV serials that aired from 1990-2016 and 14 old and new TV advertisements, the findings show that mostly women are depicted doing domestic work. Media demonstrates gender disparities between men and women in performing domestic work, …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Gender Commitments Of Commercial Banks In Bangladesh, Musammet Ismat Ara Begum

Journal of International Women's Studies

The growing field of Corporate Social Responsibility includes gender equality issues as a corporate commitment to society as well as the organization. It emphasizes equal opportunities for males and females in every sphere of organizational practice. However, the practices are most relevant to economic gains and political and regulatory purposes instead of demands for society, ethics and human rights. This research paper finds that the commercial banks of Bangladesh practice their gender commitments within a Corporate Social Responsibility framework and concentrate more on economic and political gains than mainstream gender practices from an ethical point of view. Incorporating gender issues …