Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Blood Vengeance And The Depiction Of Women In La Leyenda De Los Siete Infantes De Lara, The Nibelungenlied And Njal’S Saga, Teresa Camacho

Journal of International Women's Studies

Following a review of the primary sources La leyenda de los siete infantes de Lara, The Nibelungenlied and Njal’s Saga the role of women and their role in exacting blood vengeance within a medieval context will be compared. The analysis is based upon the primary sources as well as some Spanish legal precedents and this is the basis for the comparative study and the roots in Germanic law of some aspects of medieval Spanish law.

On The Asphalt Frontier: American Women’S Road Narratives, Spatiality, And Transgression, Alexandra Ganser

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this article, I am going to analyze the concept of “gendered space” as it appears in select post-1970s US-American road narratives produced by women writers of various ethnic and social backgrounds. Drawing on recent re-mappings in cultural geography, I will cross disciplinary boundaries and argue that for female literary protagonists, the “open road” appears as a dangerous frontier—in which women’s physical and emotional well-being is always at perilous stake—rather than as an adventurous playground. In women’s road stories, the American highway does not maintain its mythical, iconic status, signifying freedom and the heroic quest for identity, which has been …

La Loca And Manicomio: Representations Of Women Insanity During The Golden Age Of Mexican Films, Andrés Ríos Molina

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay analyzes two films produced during the Golden Age of Mexican Films (1931-1960) in order to explore the social structuring of women’s insanity. Both films deal with the scientific knowledge—the advice of psychiatrists was part of the productions—as well as with the symbolic references pervading Mexican society to understand the causes, symptoms and treatment of women’s insanity. These social imaginaries of women’s psychopathologies were marked by gender references which delimited what a woman should or should not be. In order to know how women’s insanity was taken into the big screen in Mexico during the middle of the Twentieth …

“From Margin To Center”: Processes And Relationships To Participation One Woman’S Ethnographic Journey Mirrored Through Community Research, Melise D. Huggins

Journal of International Women's Studies

In the closing two years of my doctoral degree that spanned ten years of my life, I was asked by a mentor to write a personal essay on my academic experiences at the university. That essay follows and is printed here not without the accompanying editing that marshaled its own questioning, self-reflection and analysis that comes with distance, wisdom, and the editor of a juried journal.

I was concerned to give a revisionist accounting now, another five or six years after the writing of the essay, to explain what my perspective was then as a disaffected African- American ABD (all …

Liberation Women, Melise Huggins

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Family Caregiving To Aids Patients: The Role Of Gender In Caregiver Burden In Uganda, Walter Kipp, Denis Tindyebwa, Ednah Karamagi, Tom Rubaale

Journal of International Women's Studies

The objectives of the study were: 1) What is the burden of care for male and female family caregivers of AIDS patients? and 2) Which factors influence the family care burden for AIDS patients at home? A questionnaire was completed by 29 male and 91 female family caregivers of AIDS patients living in four rural areas in western Uganda. Participating caregivers were selected from a patient list of the home-based care program for AIDS patients and then interviewed. The responses from the questionnaire were used to calculate care burden scores for caregivers of both genders and the scores in each …

Feminist Theory And The Right-Wing: Shiv Sena Women Mobilize Mumbai, Tarini Bedi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Feminist scholars engaged in the study of women and religion often grapple with the problem of how to theorize the phenomenon of women’s attraction to, and active involvement in politico-religious movements characterized by strongly “patriarchal” authority structures, and by ideologies that either seem to denigrate women or assign them to subordinate social and symbolic roles. This paper looks at some of the approaches that have been taken by feminist scholars to this issue. It reviews some key adaptations of feminist theory to the rising phenomena of women’s public participation in religious, right-wing agendas. It specifically explores the relevance of feminist …

Generations, Feminist Beliefs And Abortion Rights Support, Terri Susan Fine

Journal of International Women's Studies

Do forces that impacted feminist beliefs in the past, such as gender and generation, impact feminist beliefs today within the context of abortion policy support? While the abortion rights issue was framed during the feminist movement era as a feminist issue, it is now clearly framed along partisan and ideological lines. Public opinion on issues that percolated through the feminist movement and identified as feminist issues in the past may no longer be viewed as feminist issues today. The abortion rights issue was chosen because of the oft-held perception that it is solely a women’s issue. The strong association of …

Labor Stress And Nursing Support: How Do They Relate?, Lubna Abushaikha, Eileen P. Sheil

Journal of International Women's Studies

Selected aspects of the phenomenon of labor stress including the relationship between labor stress and nursing support were explored using a correlational design with 85 postpartum women who delivered vaginally and were recruited from a Midwestern general hospital in the United States. The Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire measured labor stress while the Bryanton Adaptation of the Nursing Support in Labor Questionnaire measured nursing support during labor. Significant positive correlations were found between number of labor hours and labor stress (r = .25, p = .020) and number of labor hours and number of labor procedures (r = .23, p = …

Two Poems, Zenobia Chan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Two Poems by Zenobia Chan

• a bowl of beef balls rice noodle soup
• God please keep my parents alive

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea: Internally Displaced Women And Girls In Liberia And Uganda And The Role Of The International Community, Cassandra Veney

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article provides a brief background on the civil war in Liberia and the ongoing political violence in Uganda that have left thousands of people internally displaced, especially woman and girls. It analyzes the willing and unwilling roles of women and girls in both conflicts as combatants, wives, and rape survivors, etc. It discusses how women’s bodies became an extension of the battlefield as all participants in the conflict perpetrated gross human rights violations against women and girls in the forms of rapes, gang rapes, torture, and beatings. These violations have forced many women and girls, especially in Liberia to …

The Differential Impact On Gender Relations Of ‘Transformatory’ And ‘Instrumentalist’ Women’S Group Intermediation In Microfinance Schemes: A Case Study For Rural South India, Nathalie Holvoet

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article starts from conflicting evidence regarding the impact of microfinance programs on women’s empowerment. It explores whether schemes that appear to be very similar on the surface may actually hide deeper differences that can help explain their diverging outcomes. The focus is on group intermediation, a feature that is overwhelmingly present in microfinance programs targeted at women. While group intermediation clearly has paid off in terms of individual programs’ financial profitability, it is also increasingly propagated on equity and empowerment grounds. This article argues that it is shortsighted to assume all forms of group intermediation will invariably achieve their …

Lottiamo Ancora: Reviewing One Hundred And Fifty Years Of Italian Feminism, Miguel Malagreca

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay examines the struggle of Italian feminism for transforming long rooted beliefs and gender roles in Italy since the late nineteenth century. I specifically focus on the legal, political and symbolic levels. First, I describe the historical formation of Italian feminism and its relation with literature and politics. Next, I examine the emergence of new feminist groups, and their involvement with the late 1960s protests. I then briefly explore the issues of divorce, labor and family laws during the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, I summarize the progress of the lesbian and queer movements in their struggle for recognition and …

I Prostrate To The Goddess Foe Destroyer – Tibetan Buddhism And The (Mis)Naming Of Venusian Features, Kristine Larsen

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite the multicultural intent of the IAU’s charge, the serious lack of Eastern representation in the membership of this supposedly international organization has serious repercussions for the naming of Venusian surface features. As this paper will demonstrate, the criteria used in naming eight Venusian features after “Tibetan Buddhist goddesses” is inconsistent and ambiguous at best, and clearly erroneous at worst. The attempt to pigeonhole Tibetan Buddhist iconographic representations of the feminine principle into a Western model fails because of what is posited to be a serious lack of understanding by the WGPSN of Tibetan Buddhist culture and beliefs. It will …

The Madres De La Plaza De Mayo: Asserting Motherhood; Rejecting Feminism?, Sara Eleanor Howe

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper analyses the relevance of the ‘motherist’ politics of Argentina’s Madres de la Plaza de Mayo to Latin American feminism. The Madres were one of the most visible and outspoken opponents of the military regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, staging weekly demonstrations in the city’s main square in the name of reclaiming their children who had been ‘disappeared’ by the regime as terrorists and subversives. The Madres adopted a strongly maternalist role, focusing their opposition to the regime through their role as mothers, and the rights and responsibilities inherent to motherhood. This paper aims to assess …

Introduction: New British Feminist Scholarship And Contemporary Politics, Kristin Aune, Celia Roberts

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Connections And Complicities: Reflections On Epistemology, Violence, And Humanitarian Aid, Kiri Gurd

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper explores the relationship between power/knowledge and violence. It attempts to connect epistemological constructions and discursive practices to conflict and humanitarian aid operations by deconstructing the narrative of ‘Development’. The paper also attempts to tease out the way seemingly transparent and humanitarian actions, even within the academy, are complicit in reiterating hegemonic representations that reproduce systems of inequality and injustice. The paper draws on feminist methodologies that are primarily deconstructive in nature in order to highlight these connections and complicities, making clear that the way certain knowledges become centralized, while others are subjugated, reflects the functioning of the global …

All The Ways…, Natasha Lobo

Journal of International Women's Studies

‘all the ways…’ was written for a Women’s Studies module – ‘Identity, Difference and the Body’. This module explored feminist perspectives on the nature/culture divide and the production of sexed, gendered and raced bodies, and surveyed a range of different feminist analytical approaches to the body, including postmodern, phenomenological, Black feminist and post-colonial perspectives. It considered the construction of sex, gender and sexuality through different cultural and social practices which take the body as their principal focus, and examined a variety of case studies such as: body image and norms of femininity; food, dieting and eating disorders; body modification; …

‘The Truth Is A Thorny Issue’: Lesbian Denial In Jackie Kay’S Trumpet, Ceri Davies

Journal of International Women's Studies

The focus of this paper is Jackie Kay’s novel, Trumpet, the fictionalised account of a woman (Josephine Moore) who lives her life as a man (Joss Moody). This paper looks at how Joss’s identity is constructed, as well as the impact this has on the identities of other people. In particular, the paper examines the difficulties faced by Joss’s wife, Millie, as she tries to help him keep his secret, and protect her own identity as a heterosexual wife. Her attempts to defend herself and her husband from accusations of lesbianism lead to an examination of the power of …

Whose Embryo Is It Anyway? A Critique Of Evans V Amicus Healthcare [2003] Ewhc 2161 (Fam), Karin Webster

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper I critique aspects of the law relating to in vitro fertilisation (‘IVF’) treatment in the United Kingdom. Focusing on the case of Evans v Amicus Healthcare Ltd [2003] EWHC 2161 (Fam), where two women sought to have their embryos transferred after the consent of their partners had been withdrawn, I discuss the legal constructions applied to embryos and participants to IVF treatment. In the Evans case the Judge’s decision to reject the women’s claim was popularly accepted as morally, ethically and legally correct. I argue, however, that because the treatment of embryos is founded upon a constructed …

The Rationality And Femininity Of Mary Wollstonecraft And Jane Austen, Rachel Evans

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay addresses the issues of self-representation in women’s writing of the early nineteenth-century British literary culture. I explore the subordination of women by a construction of femininity which did not allow them to be rational thinking subjects. Through the work of Mary Wollstonecraft I demonstrate how she provided a space for the rights of women to be discussed in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the impact this had on a patriarchal society. Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park serves as a fictional articulation of this, which illustrates the way in which women writers were disguising their political intent …

Uneasy Transvestism? Fashioning A Space For The Single Woman In Sex And The City, Nicola Rodie

Journal of International Women's Studies

‘Uneasy Transvestism? Fashioning a Space for the Single Woman in Sex and the City’ is essentially an exploration of the ways in which fashion is used within the programme to explore the parameters of the female body, and in particular, to define a sexually fluid space for the single woman. I approach the material from a cultural studies methodology, trying to especially decipher the meanings inherent in the visual language of the programme, and its use of clothing to costume its four female protagonists. Intrigued and influenced by theorists such as Butler, Hollander and Garber, but largely relying on …

Mainstreaming Gender In Hiv/Aids Programs: Ongoing Challenges And New Opportunities In Malawi, Rebecca Tiessen

Journal of International Women's Studies

Numerous efforts are in place in Malawi to address the high rates of HIV/AIDS in the country. Furthermore, several successes in HIV/AIDS prevention and mitigation (including free anti-retroviral drugs to people living with AIDS) have been documented. Fewer successes, however, have been achieved in integrating gender issues into HIV/AIDS programs. In this article I begin by defining gender mainstreaming and why it is central to HIV/AIDS programming. The second objective of this paper is to summarize the existing initiatives to mainstream gender in HIV/AIDS programs. The final objective is to uncover the ongoing needs, gaps and challenges for gender mainstreaming …

Planting The Seeds Of Change: Im/Migrant Life Writings, Michelle Johnson Vela

Journal of International Women's Studies

The subject of land, working it and owning it, is an inherent part of Chicano/a autobiography, as exemplified by the life writings of Elva Treviño Hart. The term “im/migrant” connotes transition and mobility, crossing borders, shifting parameters, all of which are fundamental facts of life for Chicano/a authors. A collective sense of community proves to be the only stasis in the narrators’ young lives, and the migrant camps become a microcosm in which societal and cultural rituals are conducted, despite the lack of control over the constantly shifting spaces they occupy. Being Mexican American, however, signifies a precarious existence in …

An International Perspective Of Privatization And Women Workers, Ross Prizzia

Journal of International Women's Studies

Authors provide a comparative international perspective of the relationship of privatization and women in the context of the work force. The methodology is a synthesis and critical evaluation of the impact of privatization on women from an international perspective utilizing a comparative analysis of international case studies and survey data from prominent scholars and international agencies and research firms to explain the adverse effects on women of privatization of the work force. Comparative data on women in the work force collected from 1999-2004 in the privatizing economies of Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Bulgaria, the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, …

‘Starving Children In Africa’: Who Cares?, Lisa Cassidy

Journal of International Women's Studies

The current state of global poverty presents citizens in the Global North with a moral crisis: Do we care? In this essay, I examine two competing moral accounts of why those in the North should or should not give care (in the form of charity) to impoverished peoples in the Global South. Nineteen years ago feminist philosopher Nel Noddings wrote in Caring that “we are not obliged to care for starving children in Africa” (1986, p. 86). Noddings’s work belongs to the arena of care ethics – the feminist philosophical view that morality is about responding to, caring for, and …

Book Review: Critical Chatter: Women And Human Rights In South East Asia, Alison Aggarwal

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Critical Chatter: Women and Human Rights in South East Asia by Caroline Lambert, Sharon Pickering and Christine Alder

Configurations: Encountering Ancient Athenian Spaces Of Rhetoric, Democracy, And Woman, Mari Lee Mifsud, Jane S. Sutton, Lindsey Fox

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay encounters configurations of “woman” in the space of rhetoric and democracy. By “configuration” we mean how a woman is postured and positioned in this space. We deal in ancient Athens recognizing that an ancient conceptual space called rhetoric, an art or techne of civic discourse, is embedded in the contemporary lived space of American civic discourse always constructing the rhetorical figure of woman and continuously under construction. We explore this conceptual space rhetorically, that is, not to articulate the feelings or meanings the space would have had for the ancient Athenians, but rather to articulate how this conceptual …

Legal Injustices: The Zina Hudood Ordinance Of Pakistan And Its Implications For Women, Rahat Imran

Journal of International Women's Studies

During recent decades the women of Pakistan have been the most vulnerable and convenient targets of social, domestic and sexual violence. This paper will examine the trend of sexual violence against women that emerged in Pakistan with the introduction of the Islamization process through the implementation of the Sharia laws since1979. The paper’s main focus will be on rape and the state legislation that governs it, namely the Zina Hudood Ordinance of 1979 and the Law of Evidence of 1984, and how the gender-discriminatory nature of these laws serves as a powerful weapon in the hands of the patriarchal society …

Weight Control Behavior And Women: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Jacqueline A. Walcott-Mcquigg

Journal of International Women's Studies

The objective of this study was to seek directly from culturally diverse women information on their weight control behavior. Specific questions were: What types of weight control behavior are practiced by women? 2) What factors influence participation in weight control behavior? and, 3) what are the cultural influences on women’s motivation and ability to participate in weight control behavior? Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 135 middle-income women (African American, Caucasian, Mexican American, Puerto Rican) in their homes, offices, and at other places in their neighborhoods. Additional data collection included measuring body weight and height. The …