International and Area Studies Commons^™

Why Chinese Neo-Confucian Women Made A Fetish Of Small Feet, Aubrey L. Mcmahan

Grand Valley Journal of History

Abstract for “Why Chinese Neo-Confucian Women Made a Fetish of Small Feet”

This paper explores the source of the traditional practice of Chinese footbinding which first gained popularity at the end of the Tang dynasty and continued to flourish until the last half of the twentieth century.[1] Derived initially from court concubines whose feet were formed to represent an attractive “deer lady” from an Indian tale, footbinding became a wide-spread symbol among the Chinese of obedience, pecuniary reputability, and Confucianism, among other things.[2]^,[3] Drawing on the analyses of such scholars as Beverly Jackson, Valerie Steele …

The Politics Of Human Development In India And China: It Pays To Invest In Women And Children, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article explores the attainments of China and India on measures of basic human development as ingredients of a long-term economic development strategy. It proposes that major differences in ideology and state capacity explain in part why India has fallen behind China. The analysis suggests that these relatively hidden political factors play an important role in transforming and advancing human development not only within India and China but also in other developing and emerging economies. The findings also support the notion that public investments in the capabilities of women and children have significant social and economic payoffs in both the …

Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Amina Bath

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Diversification Or Cotton Recovery In The Malian Cotton Zone: Effects On Households And Women, Jeanne Yekeleya Coulibaly

INTSORMIL Scientific Publications

This dissertation investigates income diversification alternatives from the cotton economy and compares those initiatives with present policy measures to restore the cotton sector in Mali. It also derives the welfare implications for women of these various policy measures.

During the decade preceding 2011, farmers’ incomes in the cotton zone of Mali have been significantly affected by the downturn of the cotton economy explained by many factors including the low farm gate cotton price, the declining cotton yields and soil fertility concerns. In 2011, the Malian government substantially increased the farm gate cotton price as a result of the world cotton …

Palestinian Women: Mothers, Martyrs And Agents Of Political Change, Rebecca Ann Otis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand the role of women as political actors in the rise of Islamo-nationalist movement in Palestine. Using a historical and ethnographic approach, it examines the changing opportunity structures available to Palestinian women in the nationalist struggle between 1987 and 2007. It looks into the sites of political engagement of Palestinian women as mothers, organizers and political candidates, suicide bombers, and nonviolent activists with attention paid to the evolution of the Islamist ideology within these four pathways for political participation. The goal of this work is to engage the question of how some Palestinian women who appear …

Women In Afghanistan: A Human Rights Tragedy Ten Years After 9/11, Hayat Alvi

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Ten years after the September 11th attacks in the United States and the military campaign in Afghanistan, there is some good news, but unfortunately still much bad news pertaining to women in Afghanistan. The patterns of politics, security/military operations, religious fanaticism, heavily patriarchal structures and practices, and ongoing insurgent violence continue to threaten girls and women in the most insidious ways. Although women’s rights and freedoms in Afghanistan have finally entered the radar screen of the international community’s consciousness, they still linger in the margins in many respects.

Socio-cultural and extremist religious elements continue to pose serious obstacles to reconstruction …

Guatemala Rising, One Girl At A Time: Findings From The 2009–2010 Abriendo Oportunidades Evaluation, Nicole Cushman

Adolescents and Young People

This report documents the process, key results, and lessons learned during the evaluation of the 2009–10 cycle of the Abriendo Oportunidades program. Abriendo is one of very few youth-serving programs in Guatemala that specifically targets one of the country’s largest and most vulnerable and underserved population segments; namely rural indigenous girls and young women ages 8–24. The program divides this critical demographic into age-appropriate cohorts and works with them to build their health, social, and economic assets as key strategies to improve health and education outcomes, improve gender equality and promote community development—thereby contributing to breaking the poverty cycle that …

Images De Femmes: Une H/Histoire De La France En Algérie À Travers Les Carnets D’Orient De Jacques Ferrandez, Carla Calargé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

My article analyses the representation of women in the Carnets d’Orient, a graphic novel series that tells the (hi)story of Algeria since its colonial conquest by the French army until its independence in 1962. I argue that the representation of women in the series varies not only according to the periods represented in the work, but also and more importantly according to the evolution that took place in the author himself while working on the series. the essay is organized in three parts according to three historical periods. The first period is that of the colonial conquest of Algeria (1830-1872) …

The House In The Market: How Q’Eqchi’ Market Women Convert Money And Commodities Into Persons And Personhood, Sarah Ashley Kistler

Faculty Publications

Recent research argues that globalization in Latin America sometimes results in the homogenization of culture and loss of indigenous identity. This paper, however, explores how Q’eqchi’-Maya market women in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, generate Q’eqchi’ personhood by embracing the conflicts of value introduced by the confrontation of globalization with longstanding Q’eqchi’ values. I argue that in Chamelco, market women are mediators of value who participate in global capitalism to reinforce the categories that structure indigenous life. Q’eqchi’ women engage in marketing activities not only to accrue capital resources, but also to maintain local values, centered on the junkab’al or “house,” …

Dangerous Obscurity: A Study Of The Female Suicide Combatants Of Sri Lanka, Jessica Santala

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Since 1991 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have used female suicide operatives in their civil war with the Sri Lankan government. Gaps in research about these phenomena suggest that it’s not seen as a gender specific problem and that female suicide bombers can be compared toe to toe with their male counterparts. I contend that the situation surrounding female suicide terrorism is unique and that certain discernable socioeconomic indicators can explain the reasons behind why some women of Sri Lanka become more active in suicide terrorism. I have compiled a suicide terrorism dataset out of terrorist acts perpetrated by …

Improving The Status Of Indigenous Women In Peru, Jennifer Zavaleta

CMC Senior Theses

Neoliberal agrarian reforms in Latin America have lead to both advances and set backs for the women’s and indigenous movements. While most neoliberal policies were the same in terms of goals, like creating institutions that encourage a capitalist markets, the results were somewhat heterogeneous in part due to the role of the women’s and indigenous movements in individual countries. The rise of the international women’s movement, which was marked by the UN’s decade on women from 1975-1985, coincided with an unfavorable economic climate in Latin America.

Chinese Women And Economic Human Rights, Lisa Fry

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Women’s human rights in China have an intriguing history and a challenging present. In ancient China, Confucianism espoused the virtues of silent women who stayed at home. During the Maoist period, on the other hand, gender equality was prioritized by the state, and women were equally appointed to leadership positions and agricultural collectives with men. After Mao’s death, the country transitioned to a social market economic system that resulted in a loss of state support for gender equity. Today, the rights of women in China are not clearly defined, protected, or promoted. China’s patriarchal traditions have reasserted themselves, obstructing women’s …

Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

What can we learn about the way that folk storytelling operates for tellers and audience members by examining the telling of stories by characters within such narratives? I examine Maithil women’s folktales in which stories of women’s suffering at the hands of other women are first suppressed and later overheard by men who have the power to alleviate such suffering. Maithil women are pitted against one another in their pursuit of security and resources in the context of patrilineal formations. The solidarities such women nonetheless form—in part through sharing stories and keeping each other’s secrets—serve to mitigate their suffering and …

Pugnacité Et Pouvoir: La Représentation Des Femmes Dans Les Fi Lms D’Ousmane Sembène, Sheila Petty

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As a pioneer of African fi lmmaking, Ousmane Sembène has demonstrated a remarkable dedication to exploring the importance of women in African society. From the struggle against colonial oppression by Diouana in La Noire de… (1966) at the beginning of his career, to the character of Kiné and her struggle to build a life for her children in postcolonial Senegal in Faat Kiné (2000), Sembène has portrayed African women as agents of change and courage in their societies. This essay explores women’s representations in two fi lms from Sembène’s oeuvre, including Black Girl (1966) and Faat Kine (2000). Using narrative …

Economic Growth And Women's Education In Malaysia And Thailand, Beth N. Simons

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduate requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Investigating Psychosocial Well-Being Among Ethnically Diverse Rural Women: Expect The Unexpected, Rochelle L. Dalla, Catherine Huddleston-Casas, Maria León

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The purpose of this study was to examine patterns of similarity and difference in psychosocial well-being among 42 first-generation, Spanish-speaking Latinas, 23 second-generation, English-speaking Latinas, and 25 English-speaking Caucasian women residing in five unique rural Nebraska communities. Participants completed a series of self-report survey instruments to assess indices of psychosocial health, including: marital satisfaction, marital communication, family communication, social support, and depression. Spanishspeaking Latinas and English-speaking Caucasians evidenced the greatest similarity in patterns of experience. Twenty-eight percent of the total sample (n = 25) scored above the clinical cutoff for depression. Implications and suggestions for future work are discussed.

Advocating At The Margins: Women’S Ngos In China, Ling U

Honors Theses

The development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China has been unprecedented in the past fifteen years. The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) and parallel NGO Forum in Beijing, China, opened the door for the first time for the establishment of women’s NGOs in China. This paper examines the development of Chinese women’s NGOs with a particular focus on two organizations in Beijing for marginalized female populations: one focusing on lesbians and the other helping women with HIV/AIDS. I examine the structure and growth of each NGO; however, on a more personal level and perhaps more importantly, I use …

Misyar Marriage As Human Trafficking In Saudi Arabia, Stephanie Doe

Global Tides

The severity and scope of human trafficking for sexual and labor exploitation has been grossly understudied until this past decade. Reliable information on how and why trafficking in persons occurs is scarce, especially for the Middle East. Saudi Arabia’s notorious policies of discrimination against women serve as the starting point. In Saudi Arabia, the monarchy has co-opted the traditional roles of women as an emblem of its own Islamic character, thereby making it a symbol of its national heritage. An entrenched institution of patriarchy uses gender construction as an instrument of state policy and state security. This intimate relationship between …

The Mystery Of Capital Formation In Sub-Saharan Africa: Women, Property Rights And Customary Law, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Economists such as Hernando De Soto have argued that clearly defined property rights are essential to capital formation and ultimately to economic growth and poverty alleviation. This article traces two impediments to the clear definition of property rights in the African context: customary law and the status of women. Both of these issues interfere with the attempt of African countries to rearticulate property law with the goal of capital formation. Constructive attempts to define property rights must address the problem of enforcement in under-resourced environments where changes may not be welcomed.

Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Ponds are ubiquitous in the Maithil region of Nepal, and they figure prominently in folk narratives and ceremonial paintings produced by women there. I argue that in Maithil women's folktales, as in their paintings, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping Maithil society, even as this register shift occurs within plots featuring male protagonists. I argue further that in the absence of a habit of exegesis in their expressive arts, and given the cross-referential, dialogic nature of expressive practices, a methodology that draws into interpretive conversation …

Bent Familia De Nouri Bouzid : Enjeux De L’Amitié, De La Clairvoyance Féminine Et Du Questionnement, Hélène Tissières

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Bent Familia by the Tunisian filmmaker Nouri Bouzid breaks down silences by questioning norms and power structures, including patriarchal authority. Centered on an exceptional friendship between three women and examining their preoccupations as well as their needs, the film reveals the empowering forces of sharing, insightfulness and engagement. Through the character of Aïda and the intertwinement of arts – in particular music and painting – the film dismantles absolutes and illusions. It encourages deep questioning in order to trace new paths, valuing the clear-sighted contributions of women in a continuously changing society.

Beyond Confronting The Myth Of Racial Democracy: The Role Of Afro-Brazilian Women Scholars And Activists, Nathalie Lebon

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

This paper offers a synopsis of the current scholarship mapping the social and economic exclusion of women of African descent in Brazil. It highlights the work of and role played by Afro-Brazilian women scholars and activists in redressing the paucity, until recently, of basic data and research on the life conditions of women of African descent. Finally, it provides some initial thoughts on the national and transnational dynamics of knowledge production underlying this state of affairs.

Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at …

Russification In The Soviet East: Education In Uzbekistan And The Emancipation Of Uzbek Women, 1938-1956, Anna Sochnikova

History Theses & Dissertations

Before the Revolution of 1917, the Uzbek population had a traditional system of religious education, but the literacy level of the Uzbek people was very low. After the Soviets seized power in Uzbekistan, they promoted the development of Uzbek language and culture. In 1937 the Soviet government subjected the entire Uzbek nation to political and ideological instructions. The Russian language became the primary language that dominated many aspects of Uzbek life: party apparatus, science, technologies, state administration, and higher education.

Throughout the Soviet period the majority of children in the rural areas of Uzbekistan attended native schools, while an increasing …

"These Is My Words" . . . Or Are They?: Constructing Western Women's Lives In Two Contemporary Novels, Jenneifer Dawes Adkison

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In analyzing Gloss's The Jump-Off Creek, and Turner's These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories, I explore how questions of authenticity can help us to understand and situate these novels as well as how these texts playfully reinvent the "authentic" western.

An Unholy Trinity: Aids, Poverty And Insecure Property Rights For Women In Africa, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Women in Africa have long had insecure rights to both moveable and immoveable property due to the coexistence of customary and statutory law, lack of clarity and poor enforcement of the formal rights to property that exist. Insecure property rights for women are most evident in the case of divorce or the death of a spouse when a woman loses access to land and household assets. This paper examines the issues of poverty, HIV/AIDS and property rights in the area where they intersect most vividly, women’s lives and livelihoods. The gendered nature of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa is analyzed …

"Men Alone Cannot Settle A Country": Domesticating Nature In The Kansas-Nebraska Grasslands, Chad Montrie

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

W h e n she traveled to Kansas from New York in November 1875 to join a husband who had gone west six months earlier, Sarah Anthony faced bitter disappointment. Her daughter, who made the journey as well, remembered that her mother often cried during the first few months. "[T]hese pioneer women [were] so suddenly transplanted from homes of comfort in the eastern states," wrote the daughter, "to these bare, treeless, wind swept, sun scorched prairies - with no conveniences - no comforts, not even a familiar face. Everything was so strange and so different from the life they had …

Gendering The Frontier In O. E. Rölvaag's Giants In The Earth, John Muthyala

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Translated from the Norwegian into English, O. E. Rölvaag's Giants in the Earth narrates the saga of pioneer life on the American prairies. It is a saga that has the sanction of official ideology and the authority of a religious edict: to go on an "errand into the wilderness," explore and subdue the frontier, which was the "basic conditioning factor" of American experience, and, in so doing, cultivate a new civilization. Indeed, it is hard not to read the novel as dramatizing the power of Turner's frontier thesis because it seems to unabashedly affirm the frontier as the great American …

'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

As a female-only festival in a significantly gender-segregated society, sāmā cakevā provides a window into Maithil women’s understandings of their society and the sacred, cultural subjectivities, moral frameworks, and projects of self-construction. The festival reminds us that to read male-female relations under patriarchal social formations as a dichotomy between the empowered and the disempowered ignores the porous boundaries between the two in which negotiations and tradeoffs create a symbiotic reliance. Specifically, the festival names two oppositional camps—the male world of law and the female world of relationships—and then creates a male character, the brother, who moves between the two, loyal …

The Exploitation Of Women In Mexico's Maquiladoras, Jennifer Gibbs

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Maquiladora factories, created in 1965 as part of Mexico's Border Industrialization Program, have become the backbone of economic progress along the United StateslMexico boundary. These factories, largely owned by foreign investors, have drawn thousands ofwomen from Mexico's interiors to work in the area. As a result, globalization and increased foreign investment have created cultural, environmental, and occupational hardships and hazards for female Mexican laborers despite the monetary gains that have resulted from Mexican and United States government programs.