Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Aids Awareness Interventions For Women: The Role Of Voluntary Organizations In The Secunderabad And Hyderabad Region Of Southwestern India, G.S. Chayadevi, Bindu A. Bambah

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper, we examine the role of Voluntary organizations (VO’s) in combating the incidence of HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases among Female Sex Workers in Hyderabad and Secundrabad. These are twin cities in the newly formed state of Telangana state in the southwestern region of India, called the Deccan Plateau. We trace the evolution of VO’s towards becoming agents of information and prevention of AIDS in the region. Our focus is on how VOs’ interventions impact the prevention of HIV among female sex workers. The activities that contribute towards this aim are sexual health, counseling, medication and continuous health …

Sexual Identity And Disturbed Intellectual Female Terrain In J. M. Coetzee's Foe And Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's The Ship: An Ecofeminist Reading, Jihan Zakarriya

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines the representation of mental and cultural subjugation in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s The Ship (1970) from an ecofeminist perspective. Central to the ecofeminist theory is the deconstruction of the systematic ways within which cultural and political forces act, and which do not merely buttress gender inequality, but also produce oppressive patriarchal and hierarchal social, spatial and environmental systems. This paper specifically relates the psychological effects of sexism and discrimination on the female characters in the two novels to both the workings of the social laws in their societies and the cultural and …

A Comparative Study In The Mena Region Within Gender Equality Perspective, Rania F. Al-Rabadi, Anas N. Al-Rabadi

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article presents key findings of basic research in the MENA region via a comparative perspective of active citizenship and gender equality. The article discusses the pre-existing inequality in the family and presents a significant issue in Bahrain, for there is a Sunni-Shi’ite division, which Jordan does not have. This is relevant to citizenship and gender equality for how family codes have an effect on women’s political participation in both countries. The political participation will be analysed via women constitutional rights. Whether this right is really exercised in Jordan and Bahrain remains arguable. Other important issues are the state machinery …

The Maternal Lineage: Orality And Language In Natalia Ginzburg's Family Sayings, Veruska Cantelli

Journal of International Women's Studies

As its title, Family Sayings, suggests, it is through a body of sayings, stories, poems and songs, recalled by her mother, that the author Natalia Ginzburg tells the story of her family before, during and after WWII. Within the turmoil and chaos of the fascist regime and the war, there is a language, a lexicon, capable of establishing a comforting and familiar zone for the members of the family. Through repetitions of sayings and sketches, Natalia Ginzburg will present a work, partly oral and partly written, blurring the relationship between author/reader and storyteller/listener. In a time when consumerism is rampant …

Can My Wife Be Virtual-Adulterous? An Experiential Study On Facebook, Emotional Infidelity And Self-Disclosure, Okorie Nelson, Abiodun Salawu

Journal of International Women's Studies

Emotional infidelity is a perennial concern and negatively affects marriages in many modern societies. The advent of social media networks has heightened the alarming rate of emotional infidelity across the globe. This study examines the influence of Facebook on emotional infidelity and self-disclosure among married women. The study uses the media dependency theory, which stipulates that social media platforms, such as Facebook, serve as a potent channel for self-disclosure and emotional infidelity among individuals. The survey method was adopted in the study and a questionnaire used as an instrument to collect data. Two null hypotheses were tested with Pearson product …

Women, Serpent And Devil: Female Devilry In Hindu And Biblical Myth And Its Cultural Representation: A Comparative Study, Suman Chakraborty

Journal of International Women's Studies

Association of Women with Serpent and Devil or evil is common in today’s popular movies and literature. A large number of movies have been made on serpent woman, or Nagin-Kanya, both in India and the West in the last century. But the root of this popular trend lies in Genesis of the Bible, and its interpretations by the theologians and the church fathers. In India, this motif came with British literary and cultural products through colonization. Though we get references of figures (Ulupi in the Mahabharata, myth of snake-goddess Manasa) similar to the western serpent women in pre-colonial Indian …

Enemies Of The State: Curbing Women Activists Advocating Rape Reform In Sudan, Liv Tønnessen

Journal of International Women's Studies

Sudanese women activists launched a legal campaign in 2009 calling attention to how the country’s Sharia-based Criminal Act of 1991 produced impunity for sexual assault in the Darfur conflict. After years of mobilization, Sudan enacted rape reform in 2015. While on the surface a success story, extensive interviews conducted in Khartoum suggest that this regime-controlled rape reform is more about the struggle of an authoritarian state to keep an emerging independent women’s movement under control, rather than the protection of rape victims in Darfur. By situating the reform within the broader political dynamics of the International Criminal Courts’ (ICC) arrest …

Parental Educational Aspiration And Gender Inequality Of Rural Children In Bangladesh: The Role Of Parental Attitudes Of Traditional Gender Role, Gender Biased Capability, And Gender, Shahidul Islam Sarker, A.H.M. Zehadul Karim, Samrat Mohammad Abu Suffiun

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study investigates how gender inequality in higher education is produced by the attitudes of parents in rural Bangladesh. To this end we examine (i) parental traditional gender role attitude, (ii) parental attitude toward girls’ capability and (iii) parental gender biased investment attitude as three types of parental attitudes based on the responses of 435 rural parents in which 52.05% were parents of boys and 56.25% of girls. We conduct logistic regression analysis to determine whether the observe variables (these three types of attitudes) significantly predict the odds of parental aspiration for higher education and whether the effects of these …

Women's Rights And Voice In The Ready-Made Garments Sector Of Bangladesh: Evidence From Theory And Practice, Dilruba Shoma Chowdhury

Journal of International Women's Studies

Since the 1980s, the ready–made garments (RMG) sector has opened up the door that allowed poor people, particularly women, to potentially lead a better life in Bangladesh. Economic globalisation has led to the growth of more employment opportunities for those women who are from the most disadvantaged sector of the society and the greatest beneficiaries of employment in the RMG sector as they have gained the power to earn. However, these women workers are also the most vulnerable to the weak legal provisions and compliance enforcement of this sector. Given the situation, the intention of the study is to highlight …

Women In Management: Challenges And Gaps In Public Institutions In Ethiopia, Worku Mekonnen Tadesse

Journal of International Women's Studies

The major purpose of this study is to investigate the challenges and gaps as related to executive women in public institutions in Ethiopia. A survey and analytical study approach was employed to investigate the case. The respondents were selected from all 23 ministerial head offices located in Addis Ababa. A sample of forty-nine executive women was identified to assess the challenges and gaps of women who hold managerial positions in their respective organizations with an availability sampling technique. Results indicate that the executive’s family related issues did not impact women’s career progress; however, the study also revealed that socio-cultural factors …

Exploring The Relationship Between Gender And Acceptance Of Authority At An Arab School In Israel, Nohad A’Li, Rima'a Da'as

Journal of International Women's Studies

The purpose of this paper to fill a gap in the literature on “leadership” in Arab schools, which are part of a patriarchal society, specifically on the issues of principal gender and acceptance of his or her authority. Previous studies have argued that attitudes toward the school principal's role are related to culture and social structure. However, those studies did not take into account the effects of employee gender on acceptance of a male or female principal's authority. Teachers (N = 240) from 10 Arab elementary schools in northern Israel participated in this study. The Analysis of Variance-ANOVA revealed differences …

Globalization As A Racial Project: Implications For Human Trafficking, Sarah Hupp Williamson

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay considers the potential impact of viewing globalization as a racial project in relation to human trafficking. Through an examination of a wide variety of scholarly sources and the work of Omi and Winant (2015), this essay presents the argument that globalization itself is a racial project by tracing how race is interwoven with the processes of globalization. It then asserts the implications this conceptualization of globalization has for human trafficking, and particularly anti-trafficking efforts. Finally, it argues for the power of using such a conceptual framework and suggests the incorporation of a critical globalization perspective for future studies …

Islamic Values In Elderly Care In Finland: The Perspective Of Muslim Women Caregivers, Shahnaj Begum, Marjaana Seppänen

Journal of International Women's Studies

In recent decades, care-providing services in Finland have engaged care professionals with diverse cultural backgrounds, including Islamic cultures. Muslim women who adhere strictly to Islamic values in such work sometimes find it difficult to cope with the practices at care service institutions. In this article, we consider the experiences of Muslim women care professionals in such work, an environment that entails multiple interactions at different levels, among themselves and with care receivers.

Challenging Queer As "Neoliberal": The Radical Politics Of South Asian Diasporic Lesbian Representational Culture, Sri Craven

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay contributes to transnational feminist and queer interests in neoliberalism, sexual politics and representational cultures that all circulate globally today. It reads Deepa Mehta’s film, Fire (1996), and Suniti Namjoshi’s literary venture, Goja: An Autobiographical Myth (2000). Each processes the question of lesbian visibility as a question of female labor and class relations among women. By analyzing representations of lesbian life in the context of laboring female bodies, the article challenges the dismissal of queer politics as neoliberal in India. Sexual identity politics, as critics argue, often dovetails with neoliberalism’s project of protecting elite and bourgeois subjects’ interests at …

Reproductive Health And Human Rights: Lessons From Ireland, Tanya Saroj Bakhru

Journal of International Women's Studies

The years between 2008-2013 were a period of economic austerity and ideological turmoil in Ireland. Alongside the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar, a woman who died in 2012 due to complications resulting from her refused request for an abortion in an Irish hospital, economic, political and ideological forces converged to promote a tipping point in the demand for full sexual and reproductive rights for women in Ireland. Within this temporal moment, a “convergence of various economic, political and ideological forces that make possible the emergence of specific kinds of practices” (Barndt, 2008, p. 36), the Irish Family Planning Association …

From The Hammer To The Fist: The Pleasures And Dangers Of March, Progress And Protest In Creating Social Justice From The First Wave To The Present, Colleen J. Denney

Journal of International Women's Studies

The visual history of the British suffrage campaign for social justice began with elegant, organized pageants of pictorial unity; but the beautiful spectacles were not enough to convince the British government of women’s desire for equality under the law. Militant activists of the Women’s Social and Political Union (hereafter WSPU) eventually employed aggressive tactics, letting go of the restrained politics of respectability. This study examines the link between the visual protests of first-wave activists and those of second- and third-wave advocates, in order to establish a dialogue about the presumed transgressions of women’s bodily presence and feminists’ use of body …

Tracing Variegated Streaks Of Feminism In The French Lieutenant’S Woman Through Pinteresque Jigsaw, Pushp Lata, Sanjay Kumar, Sonal Bhagat

Journal of International Women's Studies

Written for screen by one of the greatest English dramatists and Nobel Laureate, Harold Pinter and directed by Karel Reisz, the film The French Lieutenant’s Woman, appearing in 1981, is the cinematic adaptation of John Fowles’ novel by the same name that created ripples in the literary circles in 1969. Keeping in with the appreciation of the novel, the cinematic version of The French Lieutenant’s Woman too continued to capture the imagination of the classes and the masses alike bagging several prestigious awards. The proposed paper intends to study all these variegated shades and designs that further intensify the …

Buddhism And Women-The Dhamma Has No Gender, Chand R. Sirimanne

Journal of International Women's Studies

The increasing influence and relevance of Buddhism in a global society have given rise to a vibrant and evolving movement, particularly in the West, loosely called Socially Engaged Buddhism. Today many look to Buddhism for an answer to one of the most crucial issues of all time—eradicating discrimination against women. There is general agreement that Buddhism does not have a reformist agenda or an explicit feminist theory. This paper explores this issue from a Theravāda Buddhist perspective using the scriptures as well as recent work by Western scholars conceding that there are deep seated patriarchal and even misogynistic elements reflected …

On-The-Job Stress: Interventions To Improve The Occupational Well-Being Of Policewomen In Assam, India, Shilpi Bora, Abhirup Chatterjee, Pallavi Rani, Debkumar Chakrabarti

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article discusses the results of a study with an all-women police station and other police stations in Guwahati, Assam, India, considering their occupational stress and hazards related to womanhood issues. In this descriptive study, a sample of 30 women police was selected by purposive sampling and analyses were performed using responses to a questionnaire method and individual/group meetings. Well-being as well as levels of satisfaction leading to the commitment of the policewomen to their organization have been identified. A majority opined about experiencing occupational stress/hazards related to issues specific to womanhood. Ergonomic, on-the-job criteria, and appropriate design interventions, may …

Dignity And Empowerment: An Exploration Of The Microcredit Experiences Of Women In Rural Bangladesh, Rahima K. Lipi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Modern microcredit, as a tool for economic and social development, emerged with the assumption that it would promote women’s empowerment. Some researchers have found that microcredit has had a significant amount of success. However, some of these supportive studies have also ignored the subjective history of the participants. A second critical view of microcredit presents the practice as a Western World notion which exploits women as a tool of the market economy in order to gain profit, arguing that it has failed to provide an alternative to women’s vulnerability and survival. This article focuses on the drawbacks of both approaches. …

Relevance Of Education For Women’S Empowerment In Punjab, Pakistan, Shehzadi Zamurrad Awan

Journal of International Women's Studies

In Pakistan, women’s empowerment has always been a subjective matter of debate among the media, civil society and the state machinery because of its multifarious connotations and dimensions. The focus of my study is to evaluate how, along with many other agents of modernization (for example, media, state legislation, and civil society), female education plays a fundamental role in transforming the traditionally conceived submissive role of Punjabi women into individuals, whose potentials are fully realized. Although in comparison with males, the female literacy rate and workforce percentages have been disappointing in Pakistan. Nevertheless some improvement can be witnessed, depending on …

“We Know The Taste Of Sugar Because Of Cardamom Production”: Links Among Commercial Cardamom Farming, Women’S Involvement In Production And The Feminization Of Poverty, Sony Kc, Bishnu Raj Upreti, Bashu Prasad Subedi

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper analyses the impact of commercial cardamom farming on the livelihoods of women, revisiting the concept of the “feminization of poverty”. For the analysis of cash crop farming in Eastern Nepal, both quantitative and qualitative approaches have been used. A quantitative survey was conducted in 513 households in Ilam district between November and December 2015 followed by qualitative data collection. A literature review on the feminization of poverty and cash crop farming has also been included. A descriptive data analysis has been conducted from the perspective of the feminization of poverty against the background of cash crop farming. The …

Effects Of Armed Conflict On Agricultural Markets And Post-Conflict Engagement Of Women In Export-Led Agriculture In Nepal, Bishnu Raj Upreti, Yamuna Ghale, Sony Kc

Journal of International Women's Studies

Nepal entered into a new era after ending 10 years of civil war through signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the government and the rebel radical Maoist party in November, 2006. Women’s positions were constitutionally secured and space widened for the engagement of women in the broad social, political and economic spheres. Therefore, the post-conflict context provided tremendous opportunities for women to engage in high value commercial agricultural business. The main objectives of the study were a) to examine the effects of armed conflict on agricultural markets, and b) to analyse the state of women’s engagement in high value …

Social Media Advertising And Public Awareness: Touching The Lgbt Chord!, Gajendra Singh Chauhan, Tanu Shukla

Journal of International Women's Studies

Advertising is a form of persuasive communication with an audience. It is a promotional tool that helps in selling new ideas, products, and services through print, electronic and digital media. Advertising as one of the most influential components of mass communication is also strongly associated with social issues. In recent times, social media has acquired massive influence, providing an attractive and universal platform to every domain of businesses. Social Media has become an instrument to accelerate the process of change where it promotes social awareness and advertising in the society. As advertising mirrors the society, it strongly captures the changing …

Protecting Women From Domestic Violence In Assam, India? Evaluating Section 498-A, The Indian Penal Code (Ipc), 1983 Vs The Protection Of Women From Domestic Violence Act (Pwdva), 2005, Deepshikha Carpenter, Polly Vauquline

Journal of International Women's Studies

The institution of marriage is sacred and binding for generations in India; however, in contemporary times, domestic violence is a burning issue as it questions the sanctity of the Indian family system. This paper highlights how domestic violence between ‘husband and wife’, and their interpersonal complexity, is addressed within the legal framework of the Indian Penal Code and the special act of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. These Acts operate as custodians for women who are subjugated to spousal violence. The study is located in Kamrup Metro District of Assam as it is the most urbanised district. The …

Fetishizing Women: Advertising In Indian Television And Its Effects On Target Audiences, Madhusmita Das, Sangeeta Sharma

Journal of International Women's Studies

Advertising today has become the major driving force behind the various definitions of beauty. It is not “size-zero” models who are responsible for one version of female beauty, but models with skimpy clothes, fair skin, and bare midriffs who assume influential paradigmatic roles in society. Such practices become problematic for India as the standard of beauty appropriated by the media is highly westernized. With this background, the purpose of this study is to explore young girls’ perceptions of media pressure through the portrayal of ultra-thin beautiful models in Indian TV advertisements; and to discover the factors responsible for the internalization …

Prevention Of Sexual Harassment Of Women In The Workplace: Seeking Gender Equality At Work In India, Trishala Singh

Journal of International Women's Studies

B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, once stated that the measure of progress of a community is the degree of progress achieved by its women. Financial independence and education are two of the most essential sources of women’s progress and empowerment. However, the process of achieving financial independence is often plagued with sexual harassment in the workplace, experienced by most women. This paper is an attempt to analyze the definition and components of sexual harassment, its extent and types. It analyzes the existing Constitutional and legal framework in India for prevention of sexual harassment in the workplaces in …

Women Homeworkers In Thailand’S Digital Economy, Kamolrat Intaratat

Journal of International Women's Studies

Home-based work (subcontracted work to be done at home) is widespread in all regions of Thailand. Most homeworkers use their houses as the workplace for producing textiles and garments, wood products, basketry, artificial flower making, food processing, leather goods and plastics, metal products and jewellery, and then deliver them to the employers or business mediators. This is not the same as production for direct sale. In 2007, the National Statistical Office (NSO) reported that out of the 249,290 households, there were 440,251 people earning their livelihoods through homeworking. Of this number, 337,526 or slightly more than three quarters of them …

Rural Women Artists: A Visual Analysis Of The Mural Art Forms Of Santhal Pargana, Jharkhand, India, Pallavi Rani, D. Udaya Kumar, Saheb Ram Tudu, Shilpi Bora

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women are the pioneers of traditional mural art practices in rural India. Warli art, Gond art, and Madhubani paintings are examples of their artworks. The women belonging to the Santhal region in eastern India, are highly skilled in rich rural vernacular art. Murals are generally created by them during local festivals and marriage ceremonies. The women of six districts that comprise the Santhal Pargana (Dumka, Godda, Deoghar, Jamtara, Pakur and Sahibganj), decorate their mud houses during these occasions with visual borders and motifs.

A pilot study was carried out with the women artists to research these murals. The framework for …

Signatures Of A Collective Self: A Study Of Select Contemporary Women Artists From South India, Lakshmi Priya Daniel

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article attempts to reclaim the status of women artists of South India by a process of recovery and inclusion. The aspect of their marginalisation from mainstream art and subsequent disappearance from the annals of Indian art history has been examined. Further, the reasons for this disappearance are investigated in terms of the overarching notion of gender, embedded in social and cultural parameters. The article locates the manner in which these women artists are affected by familial, institutional and social systems and explores the experiences of the women artists in terms of their multiple roles. This can lead to an …