Feminist Theory Research Articles

Power Through Anonymity: Exploring Barriers to Reporting Sexual Assault Through Analysis of Reddit Data

In 2018, Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford's accusations of sexual assault against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and sexual assault convictions of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein prompted questioning of why sexual assault victims do not report incidents of sexual violence to law enforcement. A hashtag movement, #whyididntreport was started wherein people began sharing their stories of sexual violence and the reasons they didn’t report. Even though research investigating barriers to reporting sexual violence exists such open, voluntary accounts have not existed before nor have been studied. This study used data from a social media website Reddit to capture barriers to reporting sexual assaults. A qualitative thematic analysis was used to identify six themes through the lens of feminist and social control theories. These findings indicate that even with more readily available knowledge about sexual assault, understanding of consent is still lacking. In addition, the current political climate is adding to fear of consequences when reporting sexual assaults. The implications of these findings for social workers indicate the necessity of social worker's role not only in reporting and clinical work, but also in advocacy and policy work relating to sexual assault.

Proposing an Individual-in-Contexts Model for Reimagining Suicide Screening, Assessment, and Intervention in Black Communities

Suicidality affects millions of people in the United States every year. Despite its pervasiveness, suicidality often impacts minoritized communities disproportionately. For example, Black communities, with historically low suicidality rates, have experienced significant increases in deaths by suicide in the last two decades. Such increases have occurred in unique and complex individual and contextual relationships such as historical trauma, racialized ecological injustices, structural and institutional racism, resource-deprived communities, forced family separation through over-incarceration, interpersonal discrimination, and internalized shame. While traditional psychiatric, psychological, and public health approaches have undoubtedly prevented some suicides, these fields of study often overlook or obscure the interconnections between upstream, oppressive systemic dynamics and downstream, individual-level factors that uniquely contribute to suicidality in Black communities. To address these oversights and limitations, and to re-imagine human services professionals’ suicide screening, assessment, and intervention with Black communities, The Individual-in-Contexts Model (ICM) is offered. This model integrates critical, ecological, contextual, and Black feminist scholarship frameworks, and provides rationale for specific human services research, practice, and policy recommendations.

The Migrant Mother’s Silence in Her Mother Tongue as a Mothering Strategy

Abstract Historically silenced, literary mothers’ voices are finally now being given their due, but it is noteworthy that migrant mothers’ literary voices are yet to be fully heard. This essay focuses on literary representations of migrant mothers who refuse to speak their own mother tongue to their children. It looks at two texts by women writers originating directly or indirectly from two post-Soviet Baltic states, Estonia and Lithuania. The texts in question are the novel Stalinin lehmät (Stalin’s Cows) (2003) by Sofi Oksanen and the essay “Motinų tylėjimas” (“The Silence of the Mothers”) (2004) by Dalia Staponkutė. Drawing on postcolonial theory, memory studies, and transnational feminist theory, I suggest that the migrant mother’s silence in her own mother tongue connotes several unarticulated realities: the trauma of colonization, the negotiation of post-Soviet migrant femininity, and patriarchal gender regimes. I argue that the migrant mothers represented in both texts withhold their mother tongue as a mothering strategy designed to socialize their children to successfully negotiate the transnational, multilingual spaces they will navigate as adults.

Feminine Re-Narrating the Nation in Nawal El Saadawi’s: A Daughter of Isis

This study introduces a postcolonial feminist analysis of Nawal El Saadawi's A Daughter of Isis, focusing on the lived experiences of Egyptian women within the intersections of gender, colonialism, and religion. It examines how patriarchal structures and colonial legacies collectively shape women's roles and identities in Egyptian society. Central to this analysis is El Saadawi's challenge of oppressive cultural and religious traditions, including female genital mutilation and gender-restrictive roles, highlighting women's resistance against systemic inequities. The study explores the strategies employed by women to assert their agency and reshape narratives of national and personal identity amidst patriarchal dominance. Additionally, it critiques El Saadawi's use of autobiography as a tool for resistance, emphasizing the re-narration of history through marginalized voices. By intertwining personal memory with broader socio-political critique, El Saadawi reclaims women's voices, offering a nuanced perspective on identity formation and the quest for justice in a postcolonial context.

Feminism beyond welfare: care, socialisation and the politics of the state

Feminism has long been concerned with the role of the state in facilitating the oppression of women on the one hand and mitigating this oppression on the other. Though much has been written on the function, effects and possibilities of the liberal welfare state, the same volume of study has not been devoted to more positive proposals about the role of the state as such. Discussion of positive proposals for state politics has not been entirely absent, but the discourse in feminist theory has been disproportionately focused on the critique of the liberal welfare state as an instrument of gender and family enforcement (i.e. social control) or, alternatively, on a defence of the welfare state, even with its potentially repressive dynamics, against right-wing austerity measures. In this article, these two views of the welfare state are examined through, first, socialist feminist critiques and, second, the criticism of and proposals for welfare by feminist care ethicists. I juxtapose these positions to show how debates about the welfare state are shaped by unspoken and potentially self-undermining assumptions about state power, planned economies and state provision. As an alternative, I counterpose the understudied thought of Marxist feminist Alexandra Kollontai, and, specifically, her model of universal state provision and the socialisation of care. I argue that Kollontai's account of the socialisation of care resolves not only the criticisms directed at capitalist welfare states but also those which have deterred feminist consideration of state planning as a means of gender liberation.

The defiance of multiplicity: Diabate’s lessons for contemporary decolonial feminist thinking

The defiance of multiplicity: Diabate’s lessons for contemporary decolonial feminist thinking

Putting Down Markers: Women and Gender in South African Feminist Scholarship, c. 1980-1990

abstract Forty years since the publication of Belinda Bozzoli’s “Marxism, feminism, and South African studies,” its influential contribution to an emergent South African feminist scholarship is evident. The South African academy experienced transformations and contestations in the 1970s regarding Marxist theory and social history, impacting the feminist analyses of women and gender in South Africa. We argue that Bozzoli’s interventions contributed to an intellectual genealogy examining women’s lived experiences, gender relations, racial domination, and political economy. Our discussion centers on major debates and themes in these studies, notably working-class conditions and employment, domestic labour and ideologies of domesticity; feminism and women’s resistance; sexuality and the state; and the statuses of white women. Although we reference some important works in the 1970s that Bozzoli and other commentators drew on, we primarily concentrate on the 1980s, when a wider variety of research on women’s and gender studies appeared. We conclude in 1990, when the government lifted banning orders on political organisations. Many of these academic conversations were intertwined with struggles against the apartheid state. Scholars involved in feminist research prompted new directions in South African studies and contributed to women’s and gender studies becoming established as a field of inquiry.

Strategic intersectional identity management strategies amidst identity threats: insights from U.S. Latina nonprofit CEOs

PurposeThis study identifies the strategic intersectional identity management (SIIM) behaviors that Latina nonprofit CEOs engage in to navigate hegemonic spaces.Design/methodology/approachData were collected via semi-structured life history interviews with Latina CEOs of nonprofit organizations and analyzed using critical race feminist thematic analysis grounded in critical race theory (CRT), Latinx Critical Legal (LatCrit) theory and feminist theory. Counterstorytelling methods reveal Latina CEOs’ SIIM behaviors and challenge dominant narratives of leadership.FindingsLatina CEOs recounted experiences of identity threats and their identity manifestations and suppression strategies within five contexts: white supremacy hotbeds, liberal white supremacist spaces, pan-ethnic Latinx communities, white feminist spaces and women of color (WOC)-led workplaces.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focuses on Latina CEOs of nonprofits, a distinct context which shares many similarities with for-profit CEO roles. We use a small sample size that, while appropriate for our methodology, limits generalizability.Practical implicationsThis research provides valuable insights for practitioners, including board members, donors, staff and coalition partners. It highlights the need for changes in board development, funder education and transformative allyship among coalition partners.Originality/valueThis paper offers SIIM as a way to challenge monolithic constructions of Latinidad and advocates for intersectional analyses and nuance when studying and supporting Latina leaders.

Colonial fantasies of invulnerability to climate change

ABSTRACT Despite an ever-growing critical literature, vulnerability retains its place as a dominant concept in climate politics. What is less heavily researched is the concept of “invulnerability,” an idea that feminist and decolonial theory has many tools to critique. After unpacking the material and discursive elements of vulnerability politics, this article focuses on invulnerability as a concept that is an influential yet unexplored set of masculine and colonial fantasies. These fantasies – of modernity, mastery, and continentalism – are critiqued through different critical traditions, which are brought into conversation with climate politics literature. I then discuss the counternarratives of Oceanic thought, following Teresia Teaiwa’s prompt to “island the world.” I argue that this can be done through a focus on care, relationality, and a decolonial politics of resistance. I conclude that resisting the politics of vulnerability requires an engagement with critical feminist and decolonial thought to enable an imaginative piercing of the fantasies of invulnerability.

Circular Consumption Practices as Matters of Care

AbstractWhile a circular economy (CE) paradigm shift has gained significant momentum among academics, practitioners, and policymakers, theory regarding its social aspects remains scant, especially theory based on an ethical, micro-level perspective. Circular consumption, referring to those consumption practices that aim to extend the lifetimes of objects and materials, involves ethical considerations. However, everyday circular consumption and its ethics have not gained a foothold in the CE literature. This article builds on the existing circular consumption literature by drawing insights from the posthuman feminist theorising of care, shifting the focus of care from humans to the complex relations between humans and nonhumans and conceptualising circular consumption practices as matters of care. This conceptualisation, which follows a thinking-with-theory approach, is based on empirical material constructed in two research projects focusing on frontrunner consumers in terms of circular consumption in Finland: food waste reduction and circular clothing consumption. We identify circular consumption as care by introducing three distinct perspectives: care as tinkering, care as affective practices, and care as ethico-political action. We show that approaching circular consumption practices as matters of care, while not always easy or straightforward, is an attempt to make consumption better: more attentive, inclusive, durable, and enjoyable. Our findings emphasise the interconnected nature of circular practices, the constant performativity of circular consumption, and nonhumans as crucial stakeholders in care relations. Consequently, we offer an alternative to technocentric CE perspectives and a way to promote a sustainable world through care.

Exploring homeplace as a nexus of learning and socially reproductive labour: A feminist perspective on internationalisation at a distance

This paper explores the concept of homeplace, examining how it serves as a nexus for learning, reproductive labour, and internationalisation while problematising the gendered and depoliticised nature of international distance education. Drawing on 60 interviews with international distance students at a South African university, the research employs Black and critical feminist perspectives to critique how the blurred boundaries between private and public spheres shape learning experiences. It addresses a gap in the international distance education literature by highlighting the insufficient consideration of the social reproduction responsibilities played out in homeplaces. Our findings reveal that homeplace is neither a gender‐neutral nor an idealised study environment. Instead, it leads to unequal participation in learning spaces and internationalisation efforts. Digital platforms, crucial for connectivity and collaboration in international education at a distance, also perpetuate gendered power dynamics that marginalise women's voices and contributions, but women, however, reach out and support each other in these online spaces. The research teases out the tensions between homeplace as a site for learning, living, and social reproduction, emphasising the need for international distance education institutions to address the gendered dynamics in their design and delivery that disproportionately burden those with responsibilities for social reproduction. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic International distance education focuses on distance education provided internationally. Internationalisation at a Distance (IaD) activities aim to reach a broader audience beyond local students, leveraging online and blended learning models. IaD activities depend on the home as one of the main spaces of study while seeing online platforms as the main point of internationalisation. Thus far, the literature on IaD has not undertaken a critical feminist analysis or deployed Black feminist theories to explore power relations in such spaces. What this paper adds Examines how the politics of the “homeplace” can be used to understand the educational experiences of international distance education students. Argues that current debates often overlook how the homeplace as a gendered site influences students' international distance education journeys. Highlights the gendered nature of the homeplace and complexities of studying from home and online, particularly for women Provides a critical feminist analysis of IaD, situating and problematising the homeplace as the main site for IaD. Implications for practice and/or policy Emphasises the need for institutional policies that consider the homeplace as a significant site for internationalisation at a distance. Recommends the development of support systems and resources to help students manage conflicting demands of home and study. Advocates for a more nuanced approach to distance education that addresses the diverse needs of students, including those balancing significant responsibilities like employment and family obligations.

Perspectives of respondents in Anyigba town on the impediments to the underrepresentation of Kogi State women in elective positions following Nigeria’s 2023 democratic elections

ABSTRACT Studies on women’s political marginalisation in Nigeria dominate the academic literature. However, limited research has interrogated the impediments to the underrepresentation of Kogi State women in elective positions following Nigeria’s 2023 elections. This study examined the role of socioeconomic factors, the nature of politics and perceived patriarchal considerations in the poor representation of Kogi State women in government. This study adopted the liberal feminist theory, used a descriptive survey, and the sample consisted of 361 respondents in Anyigba with deep and diverse knowledge and experience of gender politics in Kogi State. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire, and analyses involved descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation and t-test. Study results from the 326 completed questionnaires showed that the majority of the respondents implicated socioeconomic issues (19.052), the nature of politics (17.221) and societal patriarchal attitudes (19.051) in the underrepresentation of Kogi State women in government after the elections. The empirical evidence in this study highlighted the obstacles to women’s political representation. This study concluded that improving women’s employment and educational opportunities and strong political commitment from the leadership towards implementing political quotas for women and internal democracy is crucial to increasing the representation of Kogi State women in government

Surviving the COVID-19 pandemic: European and African SMEs and domestic public policies compared

Purpose The paper investigates factors that contribute to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) surviving major exogenous shocks. Global crises such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have increasingly heightened scholarly interest in post-crises responses. However, studies that compare the relative responses to external shocks and the outcomes for SMEs operating in different institutional settings are limited. We examine the relative degrees of success European and African SMEs experienced in avoiding the worst consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachWe use the resource dependency theory (RDT) with variants of institutional theory since the RDT has been shown in practice to have greater explanatory power when used in this way. We augment our framework with a feminist theory dimension. To test our hypotheses, we apply regression analyses using cross-sectional data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES), which include responses from private enterprises in 26 European and eight African countries. We construct our data by combining the COVID-19 follow-up surveys with relevant firm-specific characteristics from the WBES conducted in 2020–2021 using firm-specific unique IDs. After removing the firms with missing observations, the sample number of SMEs is 15,178.Findings Our empirical findings support the theoretically posited positive effects of innovativeness, institutional connectedness and governance capability on SMEs’ survival in the face of external shocks. Further, we confirm the importance of firm-specific characteristics (financial status, size and age) for SMEs’ survival. Female-owned SMEs are more likely to suffer during COVID-19, especially in Africa. The results are more nuanced when we consider industry specificity and heterogeneity of government support.Originality/value Our article helps answer the theoretical (and policy-relevant) question of whether SMEs that are resilient to major exogenous shocks may share certain characteristics despite operating in different institutional environments. If that is so, then it may be that lessons from one continent may have at least some relevance for the other. Our approach’s broad value lies in its capacity to test the degree to which established bodies of theory developed in the Northern Hemisphere may be deployed in Africa, well beyond the contexts which provided their initial empirical basis. This paper also contributes to the literature on the effect of environmental-change shocks on entrepreneurship performance outcomes.

Feminist Theory Theater: Acts of Reading as Embodied Pedagogy

This article introduces Feminist Theory Theater (FTT), an experimental reading practice developed by the co-authors. Described most simply, FTT asks a group of co-present readers to put a text “on its feet,” improvising and revising its performance as a mode of ongoing, embodied interpretation. The aim is not to settle on a consensus of what a text means or to work toward a finished performance. Instead of staging a single best performance, FTT invites texts-as-scenes to be interpreted and re-staged by any member(s) of the reading group. We offer FTT as a way to take up York and Conley’s (2019) proposal that the commitments of STS can and should be enacted in practices of pedagogy. Here, we present and analyze multiple scenes of FTT in action to consider the potentials and limitations of critical STS pedagogy. We include our earliest experiments developing FTT in Act I, reading Judith Butler with undergraduates in a university lecture hall in Act 2, and reading a syllabus with incarcerated students in a prison classroom in Act 3. We highlight the empirical ways that FTT resists interpretive closure, centering embodied reinterpretation, arguing that doing so re-embeds text in the world as a way for reading groups to revision both. However, this dynamic, non-teleological mode of reading causes trouble for lesson plans and “learning outcomes” that might support the institutional legitimacy of STS critical pedagogies. This contradiction hinges on the question of who and what teaches. We argue that this trouble is worth staying with as a practical contradiction to be grappled with in further research on and through STS critical pedagogies. We invite readers of this article to take up this question (and others) by trying with, reflecting on, and revising through the situated, open-ended mode of reading together that we call FTT. To that end, we present a free, printable zine, The Feminist Theory Theater Workbook, which can act as both a guide to a first attempt at doing FTT and an archivable trace of that reading.

Representation of Feminism in Russian Media Space: Authors and Narratives

The authors examine the features of media representation of feminism as a topical phenomenon and study related stories in Russian news and mass media over recent years. The aim of the study is to determine the dynamics of authors’ publications and the feminist topic’s development in the Russian media space since 2017, as well as to identify trends in the development of the feminist topic. The materials used for the work were online publications with key words “feminism” from eight Russian mass media: Wonderzine*, Meduza*, Afi sha Daily, Takiye Dela, Novaya Gazeta*, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Argumenty i Fakty, The Voice (Cosmopolitan). The main patterns that are observed among key authors of feminist publications are activism and professional feminist interests. Content analysis which was conducted during the research presented the main communicative practices of feminist discourse and thematic priorities. Moreover, the work presents characteristics of the main authors and assesses their potential for constructive / destructive infl uence on the audience. The increasing number of publications established in the framework of the research confi rms the rising journalists’ interest in the feminism topic in the Russian media space. The research has proved that the representation of the feminism theme goes beyond traditional mass media and is being actively discussed on social networks. The following patterns were found – authors of feminism publications, who are not active participants of feminist actions/events, most often represent such thematic areas as history, literature, art, and others; the largest number of publications belongs to journalists participating in actions or promoting “feminist” agenda. Activity monitoring of the studied authors revealed a lack of systematicity in the feminist publications, but some fi nd a newsworthy occurrence to return to the topic in their materials. We revealed that feminist texts are tended to acquire political color, and the appeal to political subjects refl ects worsening social dynamics of feminist movement in the context of important world and Russian events.

A Hoarding of Memories: Conversations about Feminist Theatre and Its Documentation in Canada

A Hoarding of Memories: Conversations about Feminist Theatre and Its Documentation in Canada

Teaching and Learning with Situated Data: Socio-Technical Pedagogy and Reform at the Community Data Clinic and Biological Computer Lab

This paper reviews how situated data methods were used to critically engage students in sociotechnical case studies drawn from campus history and archives in courses developed under the Community Data Clinic and the Biological Computer Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In contrast to conventional data practices—that have long been critiqued by feminist, critical race and decolonial STS scholars for conditioning researchers to adopt a disembodied, de-gendered, -raced and -classed “God’s eye view from nowhere” (Haraway 1988) in order to project claims to objectivity and universality, situated data practices underscore the need for acknowledging the kinds of epistemic violence that a reproduction of “seeing from nowhere” expands, including through accelerating trends in datafication on and off university campuses. Pedagogy around situated data cultivates instead more accountable research practices through acknowledging the specificity of data that researchers collect and the necessary partiality of any researcher’s ability to see and know. As I review here, too, situated data methods offer valuable lessons for teachers and scholars in critical data and STS fields working to preserve pluralist, human-centered approaches to data in the face of accelerating campus investments in industry-centered data science programs. Indeed, at a time when STS and critical data scholars are witnessing the rapid growth of data science programs on campuses that train students to uncritically meet the profit-driven demands of datafication driven largely by Big Tech companies, the adoption of situated data methods to revisit sociotechnical practice and STS’ own overlooked histories of innovation in intersection with counter-cultural politics in the US uncovers the richness of alternative resources. Such histories can highlight how sociotechnical change and infrastructural transformation are more than just the domain of industry sectors or elite knowledge institutions, especially when they involve justice-based reforms.

From proof and unproof to critical fabulation: a response to Frieman

In her debate article, Frieman's (2024) reflections on the idea of unproof are a welcome and elegant addition to current debate on the nature of archaeological evidence, how we construct the stories we tell about the past, and the role of archaeology in the contemporary world. Frieman draws on both feminist and anarchist theory to argue that the value of archaeology is the way it allows us to grasp worlds different from our own and suggests that this can allow us to pre-figure better future worlds. This chimes closely with other recent work on the subject (e.g. Barton 2021; Cipolla et al. 2024; Schofield 2024)—clearly, archaeologists are considering the radical potential of our own discipline to change the world.

The Space Before the World: Spacing, Archi-texture, and Other Questions of Sexual Difference

This paper investigates the intersection of architecture, philosophy, and sexual difference in Plato’s notion of khōra as it appears in the Timaeus. By engaging first with Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of Plato’s khōra, the paper shows how the interplay between architecture and philosophy not only reflects but also perpetuates patriarchal structures. Khōra, sometimes solely described as a passive receptacle, stages a complex relationship with femininity that challenges traditional notions of space and identity. Drawing on the works of feminist theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Fanny Söderbäck, the paper examines how khōra serves as a foundational moment in the construction of sexual difference within philosophical discourse. Ultimately, this exploration calls for a reimagining of khōra as a site of resistance and transformation—one that, while existing before the architect-demiurge created the universe, nonetheless conditions his work.

(Post-)pandemic Somatechnics, Neoliberalism, and the Return to (Academic) Normalcy: Digital Conversations

This essay consists of a set of digital (post-)pandemic email correspondence held between a political sociologist and an interdisciplinary philosopher working at western European universities while the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly unfolded itself. Starting from an unsettling point in time in 2021, during which vaccination strategies and numerous eugenic pandemic containment measures were being discussed, the authors touch upon issues as diverse as the importance of embodied feminist theorising in pandemic crisis times; neoliberal extractive capitalism’s influence on society, pandemic (mis)management, and higher education; the problematic (post-)pandemic business-as-usual-narrative; grief, mourning, and trauma; the power of anger and protesting; and the forced return to normal(cy). These conversations are held together by an irruptions-based methodology based on Deleuze and Guattari (2000) . This methodology tries to make sense of the (post-)pandemic as a disruptive event while forming the backdrop for conversational and critical theoretical snippets, self-designed memes, and critical race, queer, disability, and feminist theoretical perspectives that all conceptualise (post-)pandemic somatechnics as a ‘form of ethico-political critical practice’ ( Sullivan and Murray 2011 : vii).