Women's Studies Commons^™

The Madness Of Women As An Illusional Power In Charlotte Brontë’S Jane Eyre And Fadia Faqir’S Pillars Of Salt, Luma Balaa

Journal of International Women's Studies

Historically speaking, women have been associated with madness, be it Medea from Ancient Greece, the medieval trials of the witches of Salem, or so called “hysterical” women in the Victorian era. Even in 21st-century literature, arts, and media, the madness of women is widely discussed and often romanticized. Some women authors employed the madwoman trope to show the effects of patriarchal oppression on women. Other studies have associated women’s madness in literature with subversion. This paper, however, claims that the portrayal of madness in both Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt (1996) is not subversive, …

Surviving Patriarchy: Ukrainian Women And The Russia-Ukraine War, Suaad Al Oraimi, Osman Antwi-Boateng

Journal of International Women's Studies

The conventional narrative about war and women, normalized by patriarchy, is that war is men’s business and that it requires specific masculine characteristics that women do not possess, and as such, women ought to be exempt from direct combat for their own good. So pervasive is this narrative that women are often portrayed in the media coverage of war as hapless and dependent victims in need of rescue and protection. Focusing on the case of Ukrainian women in the ongoing war against Russia, this study debunks the conventional narrative by positing that Ukrainian women have demonstrated agency in the face …

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Vs. The Hours (2002): How Does The Patriarchy Infringe On The Autonomy Of Marginalized Characters?, Mary E. Belton

2023 Symposium

Fans of Virginia Woolf know that her literature, such as A Room of One’s Own and Mrs. Dalloway, cover feminist themes. In adaptations of Virginia Woolf’s work, the same feminist themes are present. For example, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, based on three women whose lives are connected through Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, carries similar feminist themes. In the 2002 adaptation of The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, the relationships between men and women in the film illustrate how the patriarchy operates socially.

To those who don’t know Virginia Woolf’s work well or are unaware of how …

Gender-Based Conflicts In Political Parties: Male Domination In Central Java’S Politics, Misbah Zulfa Elizabeth, Ririh Megah Safitri, Sholihan Sholihan, Arikhah .

Journal of International Women's Studies

Indonesian women’s active participation in the political sphere has been supported by national legislation. However, it remains challenging for women to position themselves in the political arena, especially in a specific party’s activities. There is contestation between male and female political cadres, which often escalates into conflict. Using a qualitative research method, this research aims to discover the root of gender-based conflicts within a political party context. This research found three kinds of conflict: overt, covert, and avoided. Overt conflicts occur in the official forum when women express their anger, dissatisfaction, and protests against their male counterparts. Covert conflicts occur …

Do Women’S Education And Economic Empowerment Reduce Gender-Based Violence In Nigeria?, Adaobiagu Nnemdi Obiagu

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women’s education and economic empowerment are key measures to promoting gender equality and reducing gender-based violence (GBV) against women, which is one of the indicators of gender equality. Whereas women’s education has been shown to positively impact child’s health, women’s fertility, and women’s participation in civic life and paid jobs, evidence on the relationship between women’s education, economic empowerment, and women’s exposure to GBV is not sufficiently established. Mapping this relationship is important for informing effective gender policies and practices. Hence, this study used the Nigeria demographic and health survey data of 2008, 2013, and 2018 to investigate the direction …

The Voice Of One Crying In The Wilderness, Megan Kenyon

MFA in Visual Art

I am a Midwestern, Christian, and feminist artist. I make work about the beautiful, broken, and absurd ways in which American evangelical culture influences lives, especially women’s lives. I’m dragging everything into the light by deconstructing and critiquing the world in which I live, move, and have my being. I do this by harnessing prophetic imagination and incarnational space to shine a light on how patriarchy infects evangelical Christian theology and practice. Using prophetic imagination through photographic self-portraiture and text (my own and found texts using the Bible), I seek to make plain the effects of white, Christian patriarchy on …

Changing Ideologies Of Marriage In Contemporary Indian Women’S Novels, Bhushan Sharma

Journal of International Women's Studies

Marriage in Hinduism is sacramental in nature and considered a divine religious bond. As per Shastras, man alone is incomplete until or unless he marries. The wife is called Ardhangini (half of man) or dharmapatni, who shares religious duties with her husband. This paper views matrimony from a feminist lens and explores the changing ideology of marriage by drawing upon feminist theory. The study uses two novels by contemporary Indian women writers, Shashi Deshpande's A Matter of Time (1996) and Shobhaa De's Second Thoughts (1996), to explore the world of married women. These novels by Indian women express women’s …

Giving Voice To The Body: Slam Poetry In The Poet X, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

When the world silences her, can slam poetry become her voice? Elizabeth Acevedo, an author and poet, uses her beautiful piece of slam poetry to explore how language can empower marginalized voices, speaking on behalf of those who are usually silenced. The Poet X is a verse novel that narrates the powerful story of a young Afro-Latina girl, Xiomara Batista, who navigates the intersecting pressures of school bullies, family issues, religious conservatism, patriarchal rules, and racialized body politics in her Harlem community. This research engages with Acevedo’s work to focus on how slam poetry serves as a powerful outlet and …

The Crown Of Loss, Zahra Taheri

Journal of International Women's Studies

In many patriarchal, Eastern cultures, marriage has been idealized and beautified as a means of escape for girls and young women. Marriage has been propagated as a way out of the restricted life girls often experience under the harsh surveillance of male family members, especially fathers and brothers. Hence, many Eastern cultures, particularly the more patriarchal and restricted ones, often witness the formation of the “Cinderella Complex” in girls. Many girls come to believe that marriage can help them realize their suppressed dreams. As a result, girls often focus on attracting male attention instead of focusing on cultivating their talents. …

Unraveling Milk And Honey: Women’S Voice, Patriarchy, And Sexuality, Renidia Audinia Siva, Ida Rosida, Muhammad Azwar

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article discusses patriarchy and sexuality portrayed in Milk and Honey; a poetry collection written by Canadian author Rupi Kaur. Kaur is an amazing poet, artist, and performer who touches on trauma, feminism, migration, love, and loss in her works. Milk and Honey is a unique book of poetry as it combines written poetry with line art images. The collection is split into four chapters: “the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing.” This research aims to show how the illustrations that appear alongside the poems have amplified the speaker’s voice in response to patriarchy and sexuality. This study …

Islamic Feminism At The Crossroads Between Apologetics And Defending Women: Rajaa Alsanea’S Girls Of Riyadh In Context, Noureddine Bendouma, Salim Kerboua

Journal of International Women's Studies

The concept of Islamic feminism provides a dialectic relationship that suggests that the two very different and seemingly irreconcilable trajectories of Islam and feminism are joining forces to achieve gender equality and social justice. It also evokes the question of which weighs more than the other, and prompts queries and worries about Islam, egalitarianism, and the oppression of Muslim women. This paper examines the Islamic feminism’s order of precedence in the predicament of defending women versus defending Islam. By employing feminist methodologies and the method of textual analysis, this article probes whether the Islamic feminist project is solely about women’s …

The Heart Is Not Hopeless: Pakistani Television Drama, Patriarchy, And Activism, Neelam Jabeen

Journal of International Women's Studies

A Muslim society that interprets feminism as anti-Islamic may not accept overtly feminist maneuvers to challenge patriarchy. However, there are subtle ways of steering out of the Islam vs. feminism dichotomy. What triggers anti-feminists are phrases like women’s rights, female emancipation, and women’s freedom since all these are interpreted as the agenda of the West and hence are considered anti-Islamic. In this paper, I argue that since feminists are fighting against all forms of oppression and have joined forces with other forms of activism such as child protection, human rights, animal rights, rights of the underclass and minority groups, and …

The Social Resilience Of Women In Coastal Villages Of East Java During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Emy Susanti, Tri Soesantari, Sutinah, Henny Rosalinda

Journal of International Women's Studies

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the living conditions of rural women in coastal areas of East Java became increasingly difficult. The aim of this study is to reveal the important roles of women and their social resilience to survive during the pandemic. This research was conducted in poor coastal villages in the province of East Java, namely: 1) Surabaya City with multicultural characteristics; 2) Situbondo Regency with Javanese–Madurese mixed cultural characteristics and 3) Tuban Regency with Javanese cultural characteristics. The subjects of this study were married women who have children. Data collection was conducted for 2 months (June-July 2021) using a …

Subverting Patriarchal Interpretation Of The Ramayan Through A Feminist Lens: A Critical Study Of Sita's Ramayana, Shruti Chakraborti

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

“Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for us more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival”, writes Adrienne Rich in her seminal essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision”. Rich firmly advocates that women authors should create spaces for subversion of patriarchal values and ideals through their literary works. Revisionist mythmaking, from a feminist literary perspective, evolves through challenging a preceding text which predominantly manifests androcentric ideas. The present paper aims to examine a female reinterpretation …

After Violence: Dalit Women’S Narratives And The Possibilities Of Resistance, Anandita Pan

Journal of International Women's Studies

The history of feminist criticism has undergone a long trajectory where it gets written in terms of difference and sameness. Such anxieties get written in the Indian scenario with reference to the “caste” question. The predominant constructions of “woman” and “Dalit” give prominence to savarna women and Dalit men. As such, the mutuality of caste and gender is unaddressed. The intersectional identity of Dalit women, simultaneously affected by caste and patriarchy, has challenged this homogeneity claimed by mainstream Indian feminism and Dalit politics. Dalit feminism provides a critique of Brahmanism implicit in mainstream feminism, and the reproduction of patriarchal norms …

Of Contested Landscapes And Women’S Bodies: Rape As An Invasive Weapon In Malsawmi Jacob’S Zorami, Debajyoti Biswas, Zothanchhingi Khiangte

Journal of International Women's Studies

The geopolitical history of India’s Northeast replicates the history of the struggle of the ethnic communities living along what is often referred to as a “troubled periphery.” The fictionalised stories produced in this region, therefore, often betray the wounds inflicted on people living in this contested territory. As such, the history of this place and the story of its people lose their distinctions, allowing ethnographic study and the fluidity of personal narrative to converge and inform each other. Malsawmi Jacob’s Zorami (2018) encapsulates this history of strife and contestation through emphasizing a double significance in the eponymous character symbolising both …

Negotiating Empowerment: Pakistani Women Exercising Agency In Domestic And Public Spheres, Laraib Qureshi, Saadia Abid

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article explores women negotiating empowerment in domestic and public spheres as beneficiaries of a women’s empowerment project. While these empowerment interventions are noteworthy, they are also misleading because they ignore the local expressions of agency, where women at home also exercise power and conscious decision-making in their own contexts, just as much as any other working women--which is equally significant when talking about empowerment. We argue that there are other expressions of empowerment that are neglected, trivialized, or unacknowledged by the mainstream discourse. In a similar context, we argue that local women, while understanding the NGO’s definition of empowerment, …

The Angst Of The Dehumanized: Ubuntu For Solidarity, Lillykutty Abraham, Krishna V. P. Prabha

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article attempts to delve into the multiple forms of violence experienced by South African women, within the theoretical framework of the ecological model of abuse proposed by Lori L. Heise (1998). The objective of the article is to explore how the communitarian dimension of ubuntu is absent when the womenfolk is in question. Their existence itself appears to be insignificant compared to their counterparts. Ubuntu cannot be lived or practiced while some are excluded from this concept. Gender inequality and inequitable status of existence cannot be part of ubuntu, as “I am, because you are” or the meaning …

Subverting Patriarchal Interpretation Of The Ramayan Through A Feminist Lens: A Critical Study Of Sita’S Ramayana, Shruti Chakraborti

Journal of International Women's Studies

“Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for us more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival”, writes Adrienne Rich in her seminal essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision”. Rich firmly advocates that women authors should create spaces for subversion of patriarchal values and ideals through their literary works. Revisionist mythmaking, from a feminist literary perspective, evolves through challenging a preceding text which predominantly manifests androcentric ideas. The present paper aims to examine a female reinterpretation …

Breast Ironing In The Uk And Domestic Law, Mukaddes Gorar

Journal of International Women's Studies

As a result of gender-based violence (GBV), women and girls throughout the world have become the subject of violence and harmful practices which drastically interfere with their physical and sexual autonomy. Examples of these practices are female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriage and breast ironing. Some of this violence is categorised as ‘so called’ honour-based violence (HBV) and also domestic violence (DV). Whether it is classified as HBV or DV, the result remains the same: a gendered violence with victims mostly, and in some cases exclusively, women and girls. In honour based patriarchal communities, HBV is inflicted upon women and …

Navigating The Cairene Table: Food And Family Between What Is Ideal And What Is Real, Iman Afify

Theses and Dissertations

Our daily encounters with food, especially during our childhood, play a crucial role in shaping and informing our identity and our habitus. In this research, by using multimodal and auto ethnography, I argue that due to the guiding path that our senses carve for us, we make sense and contextualise our surroundings through our senses, and not only the five senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but also through our inner senses of time and temporality, and how time and memory play an important role in the registration of our surroundings through our bodies and senses. I am …

Golgotha, Beirut: A Feminist Memoir Of The Port Blast, Sleiman El Hajj, Sleiman El Hajj

Journal of International Women's Studies

This partly biographical narrative recounts its narrator’s first-hand, ground-zero experience of the Beirut Port explosion, one of the largest and most destructive in living memory. As the narrator recollects her mother’s distress over the possibility of losing her children post-divorce and her joy at finally obtaining—after a seven-year legal battle—the annulment of an abusive marriage, Beirut Port explodes. The focus shifts to a memorable encounter with another anguished mother who, on the heels of the blast, is hysterical but then completely transformed once reunited with her children. The writer of the memoir culled its material through a number of interviews …

We Are All Eve: Rescuing The Mother Of All Things From Patriarchal Interpretation And Its Implications For Modern Christian Women, Maeve Pioli

Senior Theses

For centuries, the traditional Christian understanding of the Genesis narrative has relied heavily on the patriarchal biases of historic church figures to enforce a gendered hierarchy where women are deprived of authority, voice, and agency. My thesis deconstructs these misogynistic interpretations to provide liberating, alternative readings for the Garden of Eden as well as New Testament verses that utilize Eve’s transgression to justify women’s secondary status. As a former Christian, I have witnessed the persistence of this oppressive theology, often repackaged as a “complementary” relationship between sexes where women must dutifully submit to the headship of men. Therefore, by building …

The Current Status Of Women In Morocco And How It Can Be Improved, Amanda Maia

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My paper will explore the conditions of gender minorities in Morocco through representation, NGOs, social structures, and resources therein to support the progress of acquiring more rights for these demographics. With an emphasis on the status of women in Morocco. My main questions as it stands are: What are the living conditions for women in Morocco and how can they be improved? What progress has been and still can be made to improve the quality of life and foster joy for these demographics in Morocco? Since the 1990s, there has been significant progress in Morocco to improve Family Law and …

Has Feminism Changed Women’S Realities In Africa? An Interrogation Of The Poems Of Ogundipe And Shire, Edith Weseja Bwana

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

African feminist movements of the 1960’s marked the starting point of debates from the origin of feminism in Africa to its impact on women and the society at large. Literature has from the go been used as a vehicle to reflect the life and its vicissitude on African women. African women writers have used literature as a platform to challenge and re-imagine gender relations within their societies and the continent as a whole. Yet, the question arises: despite half a century’s worth of literary production, has the reality of women, as reflected in literature, changed? This paper thematically interrogates the …

Nasty Woman: An Analysis Of Women's Rage In Popular Culture, Sarah Kee

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The goal of this senior project was to analyze the underlying cause for why certain female characters in popular culture were villainized for their behavior and generally deemed to be “nasty woman.” After reading numerous books and viewing films that contained “nasty woman”, there was a common denominator that linked their behavior and influenced their decision to enact their often-bloody retribution: the patriarchy. These women were a victim of some aspect of the patriarchy, commonly sexual assault, and could not receive the support they needed, so they decided to take matters into their own hands. The “nasty women” analyzed in …

Gender Inequality Affecting Women’S Career Progression In Malaysia, Krishna Moorthy, Nik Mohamad Zaki Nik Salleh, Loh Chun T'Ing, Lai Pui Ling, Diong Min Yeng, Lau Jia Ning, Lee Jer Sin, Lee Pui Mun

Journal of International Women's Studies

The objective of this research is to assess whether gender inequality affects women’s career progression in Malaysia. The study examines the relationship between patriarchy, gender stereotypes, organisational cultural factors, family factors, and individual factors with women’s career progression. The study has adopted the Glass Ceiling Theory and feminist theory. A total of 250 questionnaires were collected from women employees working in Malaysia. The study revealed that patriarchy, organisational cultural factors, and family factors had a significant relationship with women’s career progression while gender stereotypes and individual factors had no significant relationship with women’s career progression. The findings of this study …

A House Of One’S Own: Challenges And Re-Definitions Of Female Subjectivity And Domestic Space In Italian Women Writers From The 1950s To The Early 2000s, Nicole Paronzini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With an in-depth analysis of selected Italian novels written by female writers from the 1950s to the early 2000s, this dissertation addresses and discusses the challenging relationship between female identity and the home, perceived both as constraining space and metaphor of human interiority. The projects aim to show that these characters, as representative of the female individual, are capable to use the domestic space as a privilege universe in which re-defining themselves, modifying their own and other perception as passive objects of patriarchal society to the one of subjects in fieri.

If, on one hand, the house has been …

The Isolated As The Revolutionary: How “Leftover” Men In China Challenge Heteronormativity, Ruwen Chang

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

In contemporary China, demographers estimate that 30 million men are single because there are simply not enough women in the Chinese population, and the 2020 Chinese census shows that there are 34.9 million more men than women. These men are called guanggun, which can be directly translated to “bare sticks/branches,” a slur that indicates a lack of marriage and sex. In this project, I demonstrate that guanggun’s singlehood marks them as the marginalized at the intersection of heteronormativity, patriarchy, globalizing capitalism, and pronatalist governmentality. In a highly heteronormative and patrilineal culture, guanggun are branded as abnormal/incomplete. However, because …

Symbolic Compliance Is Dangerous: Perceptions Of Sexual Assault And The Effectiveness Of Sexual Assault Prevention Programs, Anastasia Hicks-Hunter

Capstone Showcase

College campuses are considered safe havens for students, yet, sexual assault is a prevalent public safety issue for all students. Sexual assault is unwanted or non-consensual sexual activity that is inflicted upon the victim. Sexual assault survivors are put through a life-changing experience that causes negative holistic behaviors, which requires understanding, support, and legal action for them to achieve justice. In my research paper, I am exploring the perceptions of female college survivors of sexual assault and the effectiveness of sexual assault prevention programs.