Women's Studies Commons^™

Beyond Limits: Exploring Motivation And The Lack Of Women In Ultramarathoning, Amy Harris

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

An ultramarathon extends beyond the traditional 26.2-mile marathon (Tharion, Strowman, & Rauch, 1988) and includes 50 kilometers (31 miles), 100 kilometers (62.1 miles) and 135 miles. Participants must train for substantial periods of time and oftentimes in rough off-road terrain while dealing with dramatic changes in elevation and weather. Despite these challenges, participation rates are increasing; yet, most of these participants are men. For instance, for every woman participant, five men participated in the Western States 100 (Soderland, 2011). Very few researchers have examined the motives to participate in this unique sport or investigated the gender barriers of ultramarathons. This …

The Politics Of Black Womens' Hair, Vanessa King, Dieynaba Niabaly

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Historically, black women’s image has been subjected to high scrutinization that rendered every choice they made for their body and hair important. Black women have undergone many pressures that shaped their hair choices in various ways. However, there is a general tendency in the literature to homogenize all black women’s experiences and disregard their ethnic diversity. In this study, we explored both African and African American college women’s feelings about the motivations to straighten (relax) or wear their hair without chemical treatment (natural). For this qualitative approach, we utilized a cross-cultural approach and interviewed 12 African and African American college …

Promote Gender Equality And Empower Women: The Big Picture, Delylah Rasugu

Capstone Collection

This Capstone investigates the effectiveness of promoting gender and women’s empowerment policy. The Millennium Declaration adopted in the year 2000 by the United Nations member states lists the fundamental goals and objectives agreed in various international forums and summits. From this Declaration eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were born. The mandate was to provide standards to gauge the advancement towards global poverty and to achieve them by the year 2015. The third MDG aims to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment through political representation, employment and education. My capstone will use a macro perspective to analyse the impact of the …

The Under-Representation Of Minorities In Political Careers, Chelsea Barr, Ina Pae

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Numerous studies have found that people of color, women, and those with physical challenges are significantly under-represented in political careers due to societal barriers. For example, women’s participation in politics shows some improvement while women occupy only 12% of the political careers. To explore whether students and professors interested in political careers have experienced under-representation of minorities, a mixed-method approach with both surveys and interviews of Minnesota State University, Mankato, students and professors from the departments of Government and Gender and Women’s Studies were utilized. These students were selected because both fields study political institutions, and are likely to seek …

Book Review: Migrant Women Of Johannesburg: Life In An In-Between City, Mandi Maodzwa-Taruvinga, Chiedza R. M. Taruvinga

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Life in an in-Between City by Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Wits University Press, 2013.

Book Review: Sheherazade’S Daughters: The Power Of Storytelling In Ecofeminist Change, Neelam Jabeen

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Sheherazade’s Daughters: The Power of Storytelling in Ecofeminist Change by Barbara Bennett; Peter Lang (publisher), 2012.

Book Review: Performing Democracy In Iraq And South Africa: Gender, Media And Resistance, Lindiwe D. Makhunga

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Performing Democracy in Iraq and South Africa: Gender, Media and Resistance by Kimberley Wedeven Segall; Syracuse University Press, 2014.

Book Review: Women And Entrepreneurship: Female Durability, Persistence And Intuition At Work, Caitlin Blaser

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Durability, Persistence and Intuition at Work by Mirjana Radović-Marković and Beatrice E. Avolio Alecchi; Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2013.

Women’S Liberation In Turkey Before The 1980s: The Case Of Nezihe Kurtiz, Fatma Fulya Tepe

Journal of International Women's Studies

A favorite argument for explaining the situation of women in Turkey is the one about emancipated but unliberated women published by Binnaz Toprak in 1982. Here, Toprak defended the idea that the legal reforms which were launched with the Westernization movement in 1923 emancipated women but could not liberate even the urban and educated ones. In 2000, this line of thought was extended to include the argument that women became both liberated and emancipated in the 1980s due to their feminist public and collective activism. While the former argument focuses more on the structures restricting women, the latter argument gives …

Wife, Mother, Vampire: The Female Role In The Twilight Series, Lauren Rocha

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article explores a feminist critique of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005-2008), analyzing the ways in which the series is a symbolic backlash against feminism. Whereas previous vampire works depicted vampires as threats and outsiders to society, the Twilight series depicts the vampire characters as accepted in society, integrating their lives into mainstream society; as such, they highlight modern society’s fascination with female beauty ideals and physical beauty. In this article, I examine the ways in which Meyer’s portrayal of the Cullen vampires is reflective of repressive beauty ideals targeted towards women, arguing that Bella devalues herself because as a …

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun: A Historical Survey Of A Woman Artist In The Eighteenth Century, Evangelia Karvouni

Journal of International Women's Studies

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun may be considered one of the most celebrated women artists of eighteenth century France. The elegance of her style and her ability to produce idealized images of her noble sitters made her increasingly popular within royalist circles. She was particularly favoured by the Queen Marie Antoinette whom she painted in a manner that provoked controversy among the critics and the public. Vigee Le Brun’s approach to her royal subject was very sentimental as it can be seen from her statements in her autobiography, the “Memoirs”. After the outbreak of the Revolution, Vigee Le Brun fled …

Dowry In Bangladesh: A Search From An International Perspective For An Effective Legal Approach To Mitigate Women's Experiences, Afroza Begum

Journal of International Women's Studies

For some 40 years, Bangladesh has fought a losing battle against the existence of dowries and their associated abuse with no indication of even a minimal impact as dowry demands inflate and violence increases. In one year alone, dowry related violence claimed the lives of 325 women and contributed to 66.7 per cent of the violent incidents against women. This article aims to investigate the appropriateness and effectiveness of legal approaches to dowry and propose a different standard for redressing women’s disadvantaged situation in the traditional culture of Bangladesh.

Involvement And Labor Efficiency Of Rural Women In Agricultural Sector: A Study In Darrang District Of Assam (India), Ghana Kanta Sarma, Purabi Sarmah Baruah, Pabitra Kr. Bordoloi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Agriculture plays a very important role in the economic development of rural India. It is well known that the contribution of rural women in agricultural sectors is very significant. A study was conducted in the Darrang district of Assam with the objectives to explore the involvement of rural women in decision-making of different agricultural activities and to find out the labor efficiency of rural women in agricultural activities. Purposive sampling technique was used for selection of development blocks and random sampling technique was used for selection of villages in the study. The study revealed that in case of sericulture and …

Gender Difference And Poverty In The City Of Douala, Nanche Billa Robert

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines how gender disparity in terms of education, occupation and a person’s income influences poverty. The main question we asked was: how has Cameroon’s depressing economy for the past twenty-five years affected the present gender gap?

We use the relative method to measure poverty. We discovered the psychological and social essentials for ordinary living patterns in Douala which we used to construct our questionnaire. It was self-administered using the systematic sampling method.

The following results were obtained: 25.74 percent and 7.5 percent of men and women respectively earn above the poverty-line: 177,000frs CFA. Men earn an average salary …

Safety In The Urban Outdoors: Women Negotiating Fear Of Crime In The City Of Kolkata, Piyali Sur

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines women’s negotiation of potential risks in public spaces in the urban city of Kolkata. The deliberate focus on the public is to demonstrate that the city has different meanings for women than men in terms of risk so that fear of rape in the city becomes a virtual threat in the lives of women. The fear may not be linked to the actual violence but to the potential for harm that is experienced by individual women. Feminist scholars have pointed out that narratives of crime and violence have always constructed the city as the space of danger …

Evolving Role Of Women In Terror Groups: Progression Or Regression?, S. V. Raghavan, V. Balasubramaniyan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Historically, women have been victims to a much greater degree than perpetrators of violence. However, the 1970s witnessed the emergence of women as important protagonists in the conflicts across the world. Recent years have witnessed suicide attacks perpetrated by women suicide bombers. This growing trend of women bombers has the general public and counterterrorism specialists concerned because of its implication that women will be key players in future terrorist attacks.

Women’s role in terrorist organisations have also transformed since 1970s.Women across the ideological spectrum played different roles at different times. The use of women for “soft tasks” like logistics and …

On 'Sisterhood': What Iraqi Kurdish Women Migrants Have To Say About Women And The Commonalities They Share, Toni Wright

Journal of International Women's Studies

Based on a research study this paper is concerned with the migration experiences of Iraqi Kurdish Muslim women. Commonalities among women was one of the main themes emerging from the research data, with much of that data related to what some of the Kurdish women conceptualise as a ‘sisterhood’ of women, suggesting that for at least half of the Kurdish women, experiences of inequality, domestic abuse, and patriarchal oppression provide a significant point of commonality among women.

More complete approaches to women’s experiences of relationships of power do not negate the relationships of power, inequality, and experiences of domestic abuse …

Battle Of Books! Diverse Trends In Muslim Thought On Women's Issues, Zeenath Kausar

Journal of International Women's Studies

It can be hardly disputed that woman’s status and rights in Islam in family and society is one of the most controversial topics in Islam. One of the important reasons behind this controversy seems to be the diverse interpretations of the Islamic texts which Muslim scholars offer on various issues of woman. This article deals with this issue. It is argued in the article that Muslim scholars often present diverse and sometimes even conflicting interpretations of the relevant verses of the Qur’an and the relevant Prophetic traditions on various issues of women. This has given rise to diverse trends of …

Gender Neutrality And The Pakistani Bureaucracy, Maryam Tanwir

Journal of International Women's Studies

Pakistan inherited the British Weberian model at its birth in 1947 (Braibanti, 1966). The Weberian framework is the basis of the professional code of the Pakistani bureaucracy. The Framework highlights the importance of gender neutrality towards ensuring impartiality, promotion of merit and efficiency in organizations. The Pakistani bureaucracy has been categorized as being Weberian by recent research, and hence should be gender neutral. This paper examines if the Pakistani bureaucracy is indeed gender neutral. It inspects the gender norms prevalent in the context of the macro sociocultural environment in Pakistan and finds that these norms are reflected in women’s position …

The Earning Power Of Mothers And Children's Time Allocation In Lao Pdr, Sevinc Rende

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper I explore the relationship between a mother’s contribution to household income and her children’s work and school outcomes. Using household data from Lao PDR, I find that as a mother’s share of total household earnings increases, her children shift time away from school and wage work to work under parental control. The findings demonstrate that a mother’s short-term needs and interests may not always align with her children’s long-term interests, and work may become a contested terrain between mothers and children.