Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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.

Gender Differences In Aspirations For Career And Marriage Among Japanese Young Adults: Evidence From A Large National University In Japan, Yukiko Inoue-Smith

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study examined the ways in which Japanese young people think about their future careers, focusing on their occupational aspirations and attitudes toward marriage. The data were collected using a questionnaire that consisted of short essay items providing information derived from undergraduate students (510 men; 433 women) at a large national university in Japan. The results indicated that men concern themselves more with work life, whereas women concern themselves more with marriage life. Although one’s college days are important times for developing one’s future career, many lacked clear initial occupational aspirations. The results especially indicated a need to educate both …

Trivializing The Female Body: A Cross-Cultural Analysis Of The Representation Of Women In Sports Journalism, Diane Ponterotto

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper addresses the question of the representation of female athleticism in the press. By means of a corpus-assisted analysis of sports reporting of the tennis athlete Maria Sharapova in both the English and Italian press, it offers a cross-linguistic description of the stereotyped language reserved for women in sports settings. The study reveals the presence in the corpus of a discursive frame which tends to trivialize the body of female athletes. This frame emerges from two basic discourse strategies, a thematic strategy, which eroticizes the female body, and a metaphorical strategy, which conceptualizes the female athlete as child-like. The …

Colonial Policies And The Rise Of Transactional Sex In Kenya, Felix M. Muchomba

Journal of International Women's Studies

The literature on the role of policy on prostitution has focused on criminal law, largely ignoring economic and urban policies. This article examines the emergence and development of prostitution in Kibera—an informal urban settlement in Nairobi, Kenya—and the role played by government policy. Records show that a rapid growth in prostitution accompanied Kibera’s transition from a military exercise ground to an informal settlement. Drawing on primary and secondary historical sources, this paper argues that colonial government policies of land alienation, taxation, and inequitable urban housing created a social context that promoted the migration of women into Nairobi and into Kibera, …

Gender Responsive Budgeting And The Aid Effectiveness Agenda: Experiences From Mozambique, Nathalie Holvoet, Liesbeth Inberg

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines how gender-equality objectives have been addressed within the context of the Paris Declaration and related aid-reform processes. The focus of the article is on gender-responsive budgeting (GRB), an approach that is being increasingly advanced to increase the gender sensitivity of changing aid modalities, but which has thus far remained understudied. With our case study of Mozambique, we aim to fill this gap. It highlights the contribution of GRB towards increasing the gender sensitivity of national policy documents and budget processes with which donors increasingly (intend to) align, within the context of changing aid processes. Additionally, our study …

Faux Feminism: France's Veil Ban As Orientalism, Emily Crosby

Journal of International Women's Studies

In the early months of 2010, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Parliament that the burqa is “not welcome” in France, citing this as a step to defend France against extremists. Employing Edward Said’s theoretical notion of “Orientalism” as means of discussing the “Other,” I argue for a more critical look at France’s role in limiting religious freedom and denying notions of female agency. More specifically, I urge a more diversified view of feminism and female identity outside of the Western paradigm. By viewing the veil as a rhetorically universal symbol of oppression, Western feminists and political figures are missing …

Fragmented Histories, Fragmented Selves: Body Weight Preoccupation Among Women In Post-Communist Romania, Boróka Bó

Journal of International Women's Studies

The emergence of body weight preoccupation in developing countries previously characterized by food insecurity has received limited sociological attention. This paper reflects on the lived experiences of minority women in post-communist Romania, as they navigate the rapid economic, political and social transformations taking place in the country. This is especially relevant, as Romania has experienced a rapid emergence of eating disorders shortly after the fall of communism. In examining the blurring of the boundaries between the individual and political bodies along with the loss of self that accompanies culture change, I argue that body weight preoccupation can serve as a …

Tunisian Women's Activism After The January 14 Revolution: Looking Within And Towards The Other Side Of The Mediterranean, Giulia Daniele

Journal of International Women's Studies

Tunisia is widely considered to be the country in which the current round of major upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East began. This paper explores the most prominent instances of women’s activism which have taken place in Tunisia in the time which has followed the revolution of 2011. Through analysis of the principal literature related to the subject and the information gathered as a result of fieldwork conducted in the capital city of Tunis in February 2013, the paper examines the most significant transformations which have arisen from the active participation of women in the uprising. The involvement …

Learning To Organize Globally, Dongxiao Liu

Journal of International Women's Studies

Between 1975 and 1995, a total of four world conferences on women took place under the sponsorship of the United Nations. These mega events were accorded a prominent place in the international/global women’s movement. This paper argues that we need to make a distinction between these two kinds of global organizing for gender equality. The former were sponsored by an international bureaucracy whereas the latter was started by women activists. Clarifying the difference helps to recognize the unique challenges posed by the world conferences for activists of the international/global women’s movement in the following aspects: dealing with logistical challenges, setting …

Book Review: Female Soldiers In Sierra Leone: Sex, Security And Post Conflict Development, Nompilo Mjwara, Nokuthula Ngubane, Philani Hlengwa

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone: Sex, Security and Post Conflict Development by M.H. MacKenzie; New York: New York University Press, 2012.

Housewives And The Sex Trade - A Desperate Strategy To Save The Household: A Study Of Housewives Of Industrial Workers, Harasankar Adhikari

Journal of International Women's Studies

The present paper examines the household economies of male industrial workers of India after their sudden retrenchment. They had been victims of a defective industrial policy, and they did not get compensation as per the recruitment policy of the Government of India. As they were ill-prepared for retrenchment, they have struggled over extended periods. In a desperate attempt at household survival, their wives chose the sex trade. These women used a brothel in Kolkata to ply the sex trade as floating sex workers. They operated in a clandestine manner as the brothel was restricted to daytime use. They used their …

Women And Information Technology: How Do Female Students Of Education Perceive Information Technology, And What Is Their Approach Toward It?, Rachel Baruch

Journal of International Women's Studies

Researchers and scholars consider the Internet today to be the most far-reaching technological tool, in regards to its implications for our present-day society. Its development and usage has, among other things, implications for gender perceptions, as well as for education and studies. The main purpose of the study was to examine attitudes held by female education students toward information technology in general and studying within an Internet-environment in particular, as well as the way they perceive themselves in such a changing world.

Twenty interviews with students of education were analyzed during the course of this study. Results of the study …

The Global Family Begins At Conception: Reconfiguring Feminist Theory To Include Intentionally Unmarried Heterosexual Women Who Choose Not To Become Pregnant, Kimberly Petrovic

Journal of International Women's Studies

The global family begins at conception. Every person born into this world enters into a global society in which beliefs and ideas about the meaning of life and its purpose are shared, regardless of one’s country of origin or the demographic characteristics of one’s birth parents. Ultimately, we are related to one another. Our genetics do not differ significantly; there is no gene for race. If the global family begins at conception, then how might the meaning of a ‘global family’ cause us to rethink our antiquated ideas about conception, marriage, and parenting, particularly for heterosexual women who choose to …

Women In American Energy: De-Feminizing Poverty In The Oil And Gas Industries, Lauren E. Mckee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women have historically been excluded from work in the male-dominated American oil and gas industry due to unfavorable working conditions and industry hiring biases. However, due to recent developments in on-land drilling techniques and increased overall production, this gender discrimination is slowly beginning to change as more women are being hired for energy industry jobs. In the short term, this means a greater distribution of wealth in what can be a lucrative field. Greater access to employment with security and room for advancement could also mean a long-term structural change in industry hiring norms, granting women greater access to energy …

Rhetoric And Politics Of The Female Body And Sex In Two Contemporary Chinese Tv Drama Serials: The Place Where Dreams Start And Blow The North Wind, Cai Shenshen

Journal of International Women's Studies

The discourse of body and sex has long been a taboo subject for Chinese females from time immemorial, and despite the Chinese Communist Party’s stated policies and legislation of “female equality”, the situation for females after the communist takeover improved only marginally and was most often just ‘window-dressing’. However, with the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of reforms to ‘open up China’ and the growing importance of modern Western cultural thought, there appeared a gradual change in the Chinese people’s attitude towards discussions on body and sex. People began to understand the ideas of femininity, female desire …

Women's Political Participation In China: Improved Or Not?, Benxiang Zeng

Journal of International Women's Studies

Continuous rapid economic growth has made China one of largest economies in the world. Chinese women have been playing an important role in many aspects of socio-economic activities. However, in recent decades overall women’s political participation in China has not been significantly improved. The spindled shape of women’s representation in the power structures will not support a sustainable improvement in women’s political participation in China. This paper argues that high-profile women politicians would contribute to political gender equity, but a broader participation in politics from the grassroots female population is more important and fundamental. Therefore, a proactive policy in women’s …

Stealing Women, Stealing Men: Co-Creating Cultures Of Polygamy In A Pesantren Community In Eastern Indonesia, Bianca J. Smith

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article explores how the practice of polygamy is maintained in a Sasak pesantren (a traditional Islamic boarding school for the study of the Qur’an, Hadith and classical texts) in Lombok, eastern Indonesia. Pesantren are patriarchal institutions that are managed by male Muslim teachers and preachers known in Lombok as tuan guru. I demonstrate how tuan guru play critical roles in the reproduction of polygamy in Sasak society by implicating women in the co-creation of polygamous marriage and simultaneously teaching strategies for resisting it. By situating Muslim women’s experiences in wider Indonesian and local Sasak discursive contexts, and based …

Work-Life Balance, Family-Friendly Policies And Quality Of Work Life Issues: Studying Employers' Perspectives Of Working Women In Oman, Shweta Belwal, Rakesh Belwal

Journal of International Women's Studies

Family-Friendly Policies (FFPs) aim to help employees manage their family responsibilities, create flexible-work conditions and enable women to perform better on both domestic and work fronts. In comparison to other countries in the Gulf, women in Oman are joining the workforce in large numbers. This trend continues as educational and vocational institutions within the country consistently enroll a higher proportion of women. Currently, women comprise 55% of the total workforce in Oman and contribute significantly in education, health, media, banking and other business sectors. Challenges such as work-life balance (WLB) constrain their Quality of Work Life (QWL). Omani Labor Law …

"You Keep Yourself Strong": A Discourse Analysis Of African Women Asylum Seekers' Talk About Emotions, Maria Clare, Simon Goodman, Helen Liebling, Hannah Laing

Journal of International Women's Studies

The current study investigates how asylum-seeking African women use talk about emotion to construct empowered roles for themselves. A discourse analysis was conducted on interviews with African asylum-seeking women. Participants used two interacting repertoires, ‘rejecting pity’ and ‘being strong’, to resist inferior positions. By constructing themselves as strong and not needing pity, participants positioned themselves as in control of their lives, and thus presented as responsible and capable mothers, a role they are accountable for. Clinical implications and findings for future research are discussed.

Re-Inscribing The Indian Courtesan: A Genealogical Approach, Meenal Tula, Rekha Pande

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women historiography has been one of the major concerns of the feminist movement particularly since 1960s. Looking at the figure of the courtesan in India–its histories, representations, repression and re-emergence, the paper seeks to problematize discourses of both Universalist and minority history writing that have been built around these women. In the context of Post-Colonial theory, and in the light of the dynamic nature of the categories of Truth, Power, Knowledge, and Discourse, the paper seeks to salvage Foucault’s methodology of writing a genealogical history as opening new avenues within the history of the courtesan in India in particular and …

Pinched Lives And Stolen Dreams In Arab Feminist Short Stories, Rula Quawas

Journal of International Women's Studies

The short fiction of Arab women writers epitomizes their penetrating feminist voices and contributes to our understanding of the diversity of Arab women short-story writing in the second half of the twentieth century. This fiction, which should be read with an open mind and with a nod to the culture and social context in which it is born, cradled and bred, deals with family relations in the Arab world and the ways in which the members of these families show each other love, or perhaps neglect to do so, with social and cultural dominion that emphasizes the collective and downplays …

The Palestinian Women's Movement Versus Hamas: Attempting To Understand Women's Empowerment Outside A Feminist Framework, Sara Ababneh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper asks whether–and if so, how–Islamic groups such as Hamas that clearly define themselves outside a feminist framework can be studied in terms of women’s empowerment. The material discussed is based on fieldwork conducted with Hamas-affiliated female Islamists, as well as women’s rights activists in general, in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2007. Centrally, this work debates whether it is possible to think of women's empowerment in non-feminist terms. The significance of this study lies in two critical contributions to questions of women’s empowerment in Muslim societies: Firstly, the case of Islamism exposes the hegemony of feminism–religious and secular–as …

Educating And Mobilizing The New Voter: Interwar Handbooks And Female Citizenship In Great-Britain, 1918-1931, Véronique Molinari

Journal of International Women's Studies

British women’s access to the electorate in 1918 and 1928 triggered off a series of efforts to reach out to the new voters both on the part of political parties and of women’s groups. New organisations were created, the role of women’s sections within political parties was reassessed and a wealth of propaganda material was published at election times that specifically targeted women. While some of these efforts were avowedly aimed at mobilizing the female vote in favour of a political party or around an ideological (feminist) agenda, others were seemingly simply intended to arouse women’s interest in politics and …

The 'New Woman' Gender Roles And Urban Modernism In Interwar Berlin And Shanghai, Carol Schmid

Journal of International Women's Studies

During the interwar period, urban modernism was connected to opposing ideals of womanhood. On the one hand, women’s participation in a culture of leisure, consumption and body consciousness created images of the New Women in Berlin and Shanghai during the 1920s and early 1930s. On the other hand, women in Weimar Berlin and Republican Shanghai were both desired and feared for their role in the significant changes in these two metropoles. This article analyzes the emergence of the neue Frau and modeng xiaojie. The growth of the cities, industrialization and changes in the work force provided new opportunities for …

Syrian And Palestinian Syrian Refugees In Lebanon: The Plight Of Women And Children, Lorraine Charles, Kate Denman

Journal of International Women's Studies

The humanitarian crisis resulting from the Syrian conflict is estimated to be the worst so far of this century. The recent influx of refugees has now reached a point where they are equal to one quarter of Lebanon’s population, causing evident strains on its fragile economy and social structure. Syrians in Lebanon have fled from their home to seek safety, however their vulnerability is now in question as women’s and children’s rights continue to be under threat. This paper investigates the plight of Syrian and Palestinian Syrian refugees in Lebanon with an emphasis on women and children. While there are …

"We Thought We Were Playing": Children’S Participation In The Syrian Revolution, Layla Saleh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article explores the participation of children in the Syrian uprising against Bashar al-Assad. The involvement of children in democratic social movements and regime transitions has not been addressed in the literature, although some works describe the role children can play in making public policy or in the humanitarian domain. I argue that just as the role of women and of university-aged youth was gradually incorporated in the body of research on the social movements and regime transitions, so should the role of children be studied. I then characterize the role of children in the Syrian uprising as a three-stage …

Libya's Implosion And Its Impacts On Children, Lere Amusan

Journal of International Women's Studies

The Arab Spring’s ripple effects on Libya led to the overthrow of Muammar Al-Qaddafi’s government of over four decades. The regime change in Libya was not a smooth adventure. It led to a civil war, which impacted negatively on Libyan children. The seeds of discord that this war sowed in the once considered stable state shall be the focus of this discussion through the employment of descriptive and analytical methods. The contention of this study is that every actor in the civil war disregarded various international treaties that protect children and indigenous peoples during the war. This paper argues that …