Exploring Women’s Agency and Resistance in Health-related Contexts: Contributors’ Introduction

Abstract

The series of articles presented here addresses the problematic issues of women’s agency and resistance in the context of feminist discursive research conducted by members of the Feminism and Health Research Group, based at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, on the topics of women’s drinking, pro-anorexia, pregnancy, (hetero)sexual and romantic relationships and gender and risk in the workplace. A running theme within feminist research and theorizing has been the constraining and oppressive functions of women’s roles and constructions of femininity (e.g. Humm, 1992; Millett, 1971; Wetherell, 1995; White and Kowalski, 1994; Wittig, 1992). However, whilst the social must remain central in feminist analyses, critics have attacked deterministic explanations that obscure notions of agency (e.g. Morris, 1997). Foucauldian-influenced poststructuralism has enabled feminist work to explore women’s agency within various sites (see for example Currie, 2004 and Raisborough, 2006), with writers arguing that the subject can reflect upon the discourses and discursive relations that constitute her and that she has some leeway in choosing from the options available (e.g. Weedon, 1987). Further than this, it has been suggested that women have the potential to ‘rewrite’ ideologies of gender by subverting dominant discourses through the mobilization of ‘alternative’ or counter discourses that position them in more powerful ways (e.g. Eckermann, 1997). Here, discourse becomes a crucial site for active resistance to gender ideologies, which in turn opens up possibilities for positive action and social change (Burman and Parker, 1993; Gill, 1995; Wetherell, 1995). Women are not simply positioned by existing discourses but can position themselves within these, variably taking these up, resisting, negotiating and tailoring them to achieve a desired identity (Court and Court, 1998; Davies and Harre, 1990). However, at the same time, feminists have cautioned against neo-liberal, individualistic notions of agency and choice (e.g. Petchesky, 1986; Wray, 2004). The