Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Book Review: “Neoliberalization” As Betrayal: State, Feminism, And A Women’S Education Program In India, Haigen Huang

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of “Neoliberalization” as Betrayal: State, Feminism, and a Women’s Education Program in India by Shubhra Sharma.

Chess Queen, Etta James (1938-2012), Olusanya Osha

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Between Global Fears And Local Bodies: Toward A Transnational Feminist Analysis Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Susan Dewey, Tonia St. Germain

Journal of International Women's Studies

Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) knows no borders. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed historically unprecedented levels of violence against non-combatants as well as a concomitant rise in international and local efforts to assist survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. Yet the diversity of cultural contexts in which SGBV occurs challenges us to ask a timely question: what might a transnational feminist analysis of conflict-related sexual violence look like? This is particularly salient because feminist scholar-activists increasingly help shape policy designed to both address sexual violence as a weapon or by-product of war and services to assist its survivors. This …

‘You’D Stand In Line To Buy Potato Peelings’: German Women's Memories Of World War Ii, Gail Hickey

Journal of International Women's Studies

How do U.S. women immigrants remember their experiences of World War II? In what ways do these women choose to transmit their memories to the next generation? These are the questions explored in this study.

Women immigrants have been treated as if they were insignificant actors in history and socialization (Kelson & DeLaet, 1999). Feminist scholarship challenges this portrait of women as insignificant actors, arguing against gender-biased perspectives on the immigration experience. Yet scholarly sources provide little information about the “real life problems” of women immigrants (Barber, 2005).

Immigration research historically has tended toward historical and demographical data compilations, resulting …

Economic Status, Education And Risky Sexual Behavior For Urban Botswana Women, Kakanyo Fani Dintwa

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study investigated the relationship between economic status, education and risky sexual behavior for urban Botswana women. The data used are a nationally representative sample from the Botswana AIDS Impact Survey conducted in 2004. An un-weighted sample of 2215 women aged 15-49, who have had sexual intercourse was considered for analysis. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses are used to gain insights into the potential linkages between economic status, education and risky sexual behavior. The bivariate analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between dependent variable (number of sexual partners) and economic status. However, with the introduction of controls the …

Book Review: Professional Men, Professional Women: The European Professions From The 19th Century Until Today, Sharonrose Sefora

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Professional Men, Professional Women: The European Professions from the 19th Century until Today by Maria Malatesta.

Winning And Short-Listed Entries From The 2010 Feminist And Women’S Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition, Nadine Muller, Srila Roy

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Healthy Choices And Heavy Burdens: Race, Citizenship And Gender In The ‘Obesity Epidemic’, Jeanne Firth

Journal of International Women's Studies

The ‘obesity epidemic’ is widely accepted as a major public health threat in the United States. This paper provides a critical examination of the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity’s action plan that is foundational to First Lady Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move!’ campaign. The report reveals ideological anxieties about race, American citizenship, changing gender roles and women’s bodies. The framing of obesity as a personal problem and individual failing reflects the merger of American individualism and neoliberalism. Self-regulation and responsibility (and the mother’s responsibility for her children) are key in prescriptions to manage obesity, reflecting biopolitical techniques of governance …

Women, Occupation, Collective Loss And Support: The Experience Of “From A Bereaved Woman To Another”, Sohail Hassanein

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study derives its force from experiences of Palestinian women, occupation and loss project that aims at describing and understanding the role of holistic intervention based on the mutual support approach “from a bereaved woman to another.” The qualitative method has been utilized, with a view to reaching an integrated description, analysis and explanation of the experience that has been documented in details, through using special documentation forms. The results reveal that changes have taken place to bereaved women and supportive bereaved ones, as a result of participation in support and through training meetings. The findings demonstrate that women have …

“I Am An Anarchist”: The Social Anarchism Of Lucy E. Parsons, Willie J. Harrell Jr.

Journal of International Women's Studies

A determined advocate of socialism anarchism, Lucy E. Parsons believed that inequities in society stemmed from unequal power relations between government and the people. Parsons delivered powerful orations and had an enormous influence in world history in general and US labor history in particular. This essay raises two issues: Parsons’ view of human nature and the degree to which her ideas were rooted in a theory of historical progress. She maintained a staunch commitment to establishing and maintaining collective freedom and her allegiance was demonstrated by her perpetual critiques of any form of domination or subordination of the working class …

The Invisible Challenge To Hiv/Aids Prevention: Clandestine Prostitution In Senegal, Gisele Maynard Tucker

Journal of International Women's Studies

Clandestine prostitution has become a way of survival as many women struggle economically without family or governmental aid. Clandestine or survival sex is practiced when women are facing an economic dilemma. These women are non-literate and have no job skills. Further, they do not see themselves as sex workers because they only “go out” (colloquial for prostituting) occasionally. In light of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, it is important to reach these women as they are exposed to HIV infection and violence. Based on literary research, observations, focus groups and interviews with the personnel working with registered and clandestine sex workers in …

The Jamu System In Indonesia: Linking Small-Scale Enterprises, Traditional Knowledge And Social Empowerment Among Women In Indonesia, Maria Costanza Torri

Journal of International Women's Studies

Medicinal plants have been used extensively in numerous countries, Indonesia included, in the domain of traditional medicine and of natural product industry. Few studies have focused on the commercial aspects of medicinal plants in local communities and on its potential impact on gender development in urban and peri-urban areas. This article aims to analyze the impact of women enterprises active in the traditional herbal sector (jamu) in Indonesia in terms of household revenues and social status. The paper emphasizes how, despite the important socio-economic results of small-scale enterprises in the jamu sector in the city of Jogjakarta, some challenges of …

Fear Of Crime And Victimization: Retracing Women’S Risk Perceptions In Private Spaces In The Urban City Of Kolkata, Piyali Sur

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article uses qualitative methodology to explore women’s fear of crime in intimate relations, an area until now uncharted. The rich scholarship on fear of crime has exclusively dealt with fear of crime on the streets, ignoring the threat of crime within private spaces. The study conducted in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, India, demonstrates that for women there is a sexualization of risk whereby women participants express their overwhelming fear of sexual harm in public spaces and deny any kind of fear of crime in private spaces. The article argues that women recast the meanings of danger and risk …

Book Review: Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories And Gendered Memory, Desire Chilwane

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Palestinian Women: Narrative histories and gendered memory by Fatma Kassem

Book Review: Women Writing On Family: Tips On Writing, Teaching And Publishing, Vera Gubnikskaia

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland, editors.

Book Review: Microfinance And Its Discontents: Women In Debt In Bangladesh, Adlai S. Davids

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Microfinance and its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh by Lamia Karim

Intersectionality Queer Studies And Hybridity: Methodological Frameworks For Social Research, Aristea Fotopoulou

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article seeks to draw links between intersectionality and queer studies as epistemological strands by examining their common methodological tasks and by tracing some similar difficulties of translating theory into research methods. Intersectionality is the systematic study of the ways in which differences such as race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and other sociopolitical and cultural identities interrelate. Queer theory, when applied as a distinct methodological approach to the study of gender and sexuality, has sought to denaturalise categories of analysis and make normativity visible. By examining existing research projects framed as ‘queer’ alongside ones that use intersectionality, I consider the …

Punching Like A Girl: Embodied Violence And Resistance In The Context Of Women’S Self-Defense, Emilia Aaltonen

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay explores the way discourses of gender and aggression can be combined in the female body. Traditionally, the female body has been seen as that of a victim and the man’s body as that of an aggressor. Although the behaviours are absorbed through learning and repetitive action, these essentialist discourses of the gendered body have become naturalized. I suggest that gendered behaviours are not fixed and, just as they are learned in the first place, they can also be unlearned and replaced by new ones. Using the example of women’s self-defense, the essay investigates how women can train their …

Gendered Performance Performing Gender In The Diy Punk And Hardcore Music Scene, Naomi Griffin

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article considers the relevance of geographical theories about gender roles and how gender is performed, to the situated context of a local DIY (‘Do It Yourself) punk scene. It draws on an auto-ethnographic study carried out by the author between September 2008 and May 2009, which explored the themes of the body, gendered performativity and gendered spatialities. The study was based on the author’s observations, reflections and conversations with other participants at live music events (‘shows’) in a particular region of the UK, but also revealed how DIY punk offers an example of an imagined community, crossing temporal, spatial …

Women And Post-Conflict Society In Sierra Leone, Hazel M. Mcferson

Journal of International Women's Studies

Gender inequality in Sierra Leone, after colonialism among the worst in Sub-Saharan Africa, has been heightened further by the civil war of 1992-2002—which was related in part to the struggle for control of “blood diamonds” but also to long-standing social and regional disparities, and to collapse of formal institutions and widespread corruption. Sierra Leonean women are today among the most marginalized in the world, socially, economically and politically. However, there are differences among three groups: the better educated, comparatively richer “Krios” (descendants of the original freed slaves); relatively enlightened tribes; and the more traditional patriarchal tribes. The main route to …

Identity, Hospital, And Cancer: The Story Of Lucy Grealy, Florina Catalina Florescu

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Girls Of The Factory: A Year With The Garment Workers Of Morocco, Catherine Ogunmefun

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Girls of the Factory: A Year with the Garment Workers of Morocco by Cairoli Laetitia

Tension In Intersectional Agency: A Theoretical Discussion Of The Interior Conflict Of White, Feminist Activists’ Intersectional Location, Dieuwertje Dyi Huijg

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this article I question the wholeness of the agency of white, feminist activists. Drawing on intersectional theory, I problematise the multiplicative character of their location in order to be able to understand how intersectional agency operates. This location reveals three layers of intersectionality; the junction of axes of social signification (gender and race); the junction of manifestations on these axes (female and white); and the junction of, subsequent, positions in power relations (disadvantaged and advantaged). I argue that this is specifically important and complex when we explore how whiteness can operate intersectionally. This results in three observations. First, this …

A Grounded Theory Investigation Into The Experiences Of African Women Refugees: Effects On Resilience And Identity And Implications For Service Provision, Katie Sherwood, Helen Liebling-Kalifani

Journal of International Women's Studies

The current study aims to explore African women’s experiences of violence during conflict. The research was undertaken in 2009 in part fulfillment for a Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology. Previous research on women refugees’ experiences has focused on the negative impact on psychological functioning despite indications that they show great strength and resilience. Using qualitative methods the study sought to identify the impact of violence on mental health as well as develop a greater understanding of the roles of resilience, coping and identity. Women from Somalia and Zimbabwe who attended a refugee centre in the UK were interviewed; analysis of …

Present But Absent: Women In Business Leadership In South Africa, Catherine Ndinda, Ufo Okeke-Uzodike

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women constitute forty six (46) percent of the economically active population in South Africa. Although both South African, African men and women are well represented in the economically active population, questions arise when it comes to their presence and effective representation at higher decision-making levels. Indeed, while African men and White women are present, White men dominate in top management. Through a gender analysis of current data on the labour force, this paper examines women’s representation in top decision-making for all employers (government and business) in South Africa. In discussing the trends, the paper highlights gender disparities in the advancement …

Book Review: Women Of The Conquest Dynasties: Gender And Identity In Liao And Jin China, Elmé Vivier

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Women of the Conquest Dynasties: Gender and Identity in Liao and Jin China by Linda Cooke Johnson.

Book Review: Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages, Annarina Koivu

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages, compiled and edited by Carol Smallwood and Cynthia Brackett-Vincent

Book Review: Strike! The Insurrections Of Ellen Dawson, Mvuselelo Mgeyane

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Strike! The Insurrections of Ellen Dawson by David Lee McMullen

Book Review: Feminist Epistemology And Philosophy Of Science: Power In Knowledge, Susanne Pohlmann

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Power in Knowledge, edited by Heidi E. Grasswick

Book Review: Migration, Domestic Work And Affect: A Decolonial Approach On Value And The Feminization Of Labor, Ronnie Mmotlane

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Migration, Domestic Work and Affect: a Decolonial Approach on Value and the Feminization of Labor, edited by Encarnacion Gutierrez-Rodriguez