Women's Studies Commons^™

Looking At The Onlookers: The Attitudes Of Women's Wwi Poetry, Kaitlyn M. Hodges

Honors College Theses

The poems concerning WWI written by women reflect different attitudes about the concept of war and can be grouped into categories based on their stances toward the Great War. The most familiar feminine voice in the poetry of WWI illuminated a nationalistic and glorified view of war, where fighting (and dying) for a just cause outweighs any possible loss of life or limb. Running counter to this sentiment is a strain of poetry that calls into question the jingoistic and ill-informed opinions of the former group. Alongside these antipathetic groups there was a third, more meliorated, set of voices. These …

13 Lunas 13/13 Moons 13: A Video-Project About Sexuality And Menstruation, Tina Escaja

Journal of International Women's Studies

The subject of menstruation is filled with powerful socio-cultural implications involving language, religion and gender relations. Yet, the topic is often relegated to silence, considered taboo, and strongly associated with impurity and shame. This schism between the natural reality of menstruation and its socio-cultural damnation highlights the marginal and oppressed condition of women who are considered inferior and impure in many cultures and religions for the mere fact of menstruating, despite ancient practices that validated and celebrated women’s menarche. The multimedia project 13 lunas 13/13 moons 13 allows for the interactive exploration of these themes while reflecting upon the patriarchal …

A Gender Perspective On Role Performance Of Elected Panchayat Leaders In India, P. Sindhuja, K.R. Murugan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Gender equality is fundamentally related to sustainable development, and globally accepted as a necessity for the promotion of human rights. Gender empowerment is determined by active participation of women and men in social, economic, and political spaces and activities taken in decision-making. In the context of local government, gender equality is critical as women and men face different challenges in full participation, representation and decent work opportunities. Though the constitution provides women the right to be elected in political and public representative institutions, such as parliament and local government bodies, gender inequality, as a collection of interlinked problems existed in …

Changing Equations: Empowerment, Entrepreneurship And The Welfare Of Women, Varsha Raghunandan

Journal of International Women's Studies

The world is a melange of varied cultures and norms. Some are similar, while others are strikingly different from the rest. However, every society has something in common - suppression of their women although the degree and extent may vary. It is not that women are incapable of playing those roles in society which have been dominated by men, but consistent and strategic oppression of the female sex has led many women to consider themselves as weak, powerless and a step below their male counterparts. The waves of feminism and movements to emancipate women have, to a notable extent, changed …

Deliberate Ceiling For Career Progress Of Female Public Service Employees: A Contemporary Transformation Trend In South Africa, Oladapo O. Osituyo

Journal of International Women's Studies

Female employees are rarely found in senior level decision-making roles in the public service sector. Rather they are concentrated in larger number at the lower management levels in the workplace. This study evaluates barriers to female employees’ career progress within the South African public service sector. Prior studies relating to progress of female employees into the senior and top managerial levels within the South African public service sector have revealed an exclusion and inability to climb the decision-making ladder. Employing a questionnaire that included evaluative tools from previous scholarly studies (e.g., the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), Women as Managers Scale …

Boxed Women In Public Administration - Between Glass Ceilings And Glass Walls: A Study Of Women's Participation In Public Administration In The Arab States, Salma Nasser

Journal of International Women's Studies

Inclusive decision-making is necessary in terms of both legitimacy and good policy outcomes. Recognizing this, closing persistent gender gaps in public life has emerged as a critical policy issue as countries increase their efforts to foster inclusive growth and build trust and confidence in public institutions while working towards the SDGs. The public administration determines the manner in which political and economic decisions are implemented and how budgets are planned and spent. Additionally, it is a primary employer for women in many developing countries – particularly in the Arab world. In some countries, women have in fact surpassed parity in …

A Comparative Study Of Influential Factors Impacting Women’S Activities In Traditional And Modern Neighborhood Spaces In Tehran, Iran, Maryam Mohammadi, Arezoo Rafiee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Neighborhood spaces are regarded as the main arenas for women’s social interactions. Thus, women should be completely comfortable in these spaces. Nonetheless, some studies have indicated that women’s presence and activities in such spaces are both prevented or decreased, and accordingly gendered space is established. Gendered spaces play a significant role in gender identity and roles. Thus, it is necessary to identify the factors which formed various spaces. It seems that physical factors which make spaces non-responsive for women, along with socio-cultural factors such as attitudes and social norms can influence women’s activities and their presence in neighbourhood spaces. To …

Imaging The Woman Through Tanzanian Women’S Maxims, Shani Omari, Fikeni E. M. K. Senkoro

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women’s maxims, as well as other forms of oral literature in Tanzania, are a popular genre. They are verbal arts that can be self-addressed or addressed to a fellow woman among womenfolk. This paper intends to examine the role of these maxims in imaging women in Tanzania. This study was prompted by the findings of previous studies regarding the portrayal of women in Kiswahili literature where, generally, women are depicted as inferior beings compared to men, partly due to the fact that most authors are men. Hence, we found it imperative to investigate women’s maxims that are created and uttered …

The Role Of The Family In Crime Causation: A Comparative Study Of ‘Family Of Orientation’ And ‘Family Of Procreation’ (A Study Of Women Prisoners In The Central Jails Of Rajasthan), Asha Bhandari

Journal of International Women's Studies

Family life and marriage are often considered to be an important lever for criminal desistance, especially among men. The mechanisms that lead to desistance from crime may be general in nature, but men and women do not necessarily respond in a similar way relative to marital status. This paper extends the hypothesis of familial relationships and desistance in crime and provides a perspective to foster understanding of the influence that ‘family of orientation’ and ‘family of procreation’ makes in crime committed by women. For this purpose various factors, including family size, family environment, relationship with family members, gender role …

Writing With Vs. Writing About: Co-Producing Consciousness-Raising Fiction With Young Women From Aid-Supported Communities In Malawi, Emma Makepeace

Journal of International Women's Studies

While some African women have access to education and avenues for writing and publishing their creative work, there remains a gap in accessibility for young African women from aid-supported communities to write and share stories of importance to them. In contrast to their own silencing, these young women are often written about by the aid organizations supporting their communities for fund or awareness raising purposes. The way in which young women from aid-supported communities are written about can present issues of representation, as often the author is from another culture and a position of privilege. Co-producing consciousness-raising fiction with young …

Gender, Race And Justification: The Value Of Critical Discourse Analysis (Cda) In Contemporary Settler Colonial Contexts, Caroline Hodes

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper outlines an approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) that can be used to examine multiple forms of textual data as part of decolonial practice in any national context that is struggling to acknowledge both its colonial past and its ongoing colonial present. The author provides an explanation of what CDA is followed by a discussion of the methods used in a larger multi-level analysis focused on the impact of the defense witness testimony in a Canadian Pacific salmon fisheries case. The larger project has recently been published in the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice. This paper will …

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 …

The Victimization Of The “Muslim Woman”: The Case Of Amina Filali, Morocco, Nima Mesbahi

Journal of International Women's Studies

In 2012, Amina Filali, a young Moroccan teenager killed herself after a judge had ruled for her to marry her rapist. Drawing from the story of Amina, this paper will contextualize the event in its broader scope analyzing the international and national discourses surrounding the case, reminiscent of orientalist discourses that constantly portray the “Muslim woman” as a victim of Islam. Through a careful reading of the text of law, I will show that the clause 475 of the penal code is in fact a Napoleonic law adopted in verbatim rather than an Islamic tradition. Through an analysis of a …

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 …

Reinforcing Sexism And Misogyny: Social Media, Symbolic Violence And The Construction Of Femininity-As-Fail, Sue Ann Barratt

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper demonstrates, through content analysis, how online audiences can enforce gender based violence (GBV) as a real threat in the online space through verbally aggressive speech acts that function as symbolic violence. I examine cases emerging out of the context of Trinidad and Tobago, to articulate, how, for example, prejudicial chastising of women is used as a discourse to not only shame and blame but construct femininity-as-fail, however that femininity is embodied. This symbolic violence I read as a spectre, a force that enforces, both in the offline and online, the reassertion of strict respectability and responsibility as …

The Pedagogy Of Difference: Co-Producing Feminist Consciousness Across Borders, Patricia Mohammed

Journal of International Women's Studies

How has a movement built on the consciousness of sisterhood become so fragmented between the end of the 20th and into the second decade of the 21st century? As different political tendencies, widely varying economic conditions and cultural dissimilarities emerged in global struggles to achieve diverse visions of women’s and gender equality, the current feminist movement appears to be characterized by chasms between the east, west, north and south rather than viewed as a movement whose basic tenets are parallel across racial, geographic and social barriers. By looking at lived examples of confrontations, and through a deliberate process of self-reflexive …

Introduction To The Second Special Issue Of The World Conference On Women’S Studies, Colombo Sri Lanka Jiws, Madhavi Venkatesan, Diana Fox

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Wwe: Redefining Working-Class Womanhood Through Commodified Feminism, Janice M. Sikon

The University Honors Program

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is the largest professional wrestling promotion in the world (Bajaj & Banerjee, 2016). Their programs air in 20 languages in over 180 countries, and in the United States approximately 11 million people watch their programs each week (“FAQ,” n.d.). These programs include six hours of televised weekly events and 16 annual pay-per-view events (“WWE Reports,” 2017). In the first quarter of 2017 the company grossed $188.4 million (“WWE Reports,” 2017). They have close ties with the current presidential administration, as Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon was the CEO of the company from 1980 to 2009 (Reuters, …

Riot Grrrl And Girl Zines: Intersectional Feminist Art In Action, Paige Szmodis

Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Honors Papers

This project examines the Riot Grrrl punk feminist movement of the 1990s and its production of girl zines as artistic, cultural, and political artifacts. Zines, or self-produced and self-published magazines, allowed young women access to DIY (do-it-yourself) mediums for self-representation. As Riot Grrrl’s third-wave feminist consciousness and cultural production tactics spread to more girls throughout the 90s, zines became a primary method of communication and community-building for girls in the movement and on the outskirts of the scene. From girl zines in the Barnard Zine Library, I gathered data to map over 600 zines from the 1990s in the United …

The Heart Of K'É: Transforming Diné Special Education And Unsettling The Colonial Logics Of Disability, Sandra Yellowhorse

American Studies ETDs

This paper takes up the roles of ideology and spatiality as they impact Diné students and learners in understanding conceptions of normativity, neuro-diversity and bodily variance. I am concerned with how the movement and creation of Indigenous schools and their praxis still maintain and often times produce settler colonial ideologies of being, personhood, difference and ability. I illustrate the challenges that Diné planners and educators face in entrenching cultural knowledge and language into their educational initiatives, while some of the problematic manifestations and expressions of normativity present themselves through state polices, federal law and mainstream curriculum.

I focus on the …