Assertive Women Research Articles

A Voice of Liberty and Protest: Exploring Binodini’s Identity Crisis, Power and Self-discovery in Tagore’s Chokher Bali (A Grain of Sand)

The cultural icon and trail blazer of Bengali Renaissance Rabindranath Tagore has experimented successfully upon some great female protagonists in his fiction who have managed to curve a niche for themselves in world literature. A master artist, he has also depicted with his dexterously professional brushstrokes a host of highly progressive and brave female identities with a strong voice of protest against all prejudices of the contemporary backward and prejudiced Hindu communities as well as against all conservative forces of fate and society. Tagore has portrayed extremely meticulously some female voices, attributing them to the strength of motherhood, the beauty of the beloved, and the strong power of womanhood, allowing them to develop their own individual status and identity in a stereotypical, male dominated, and patriarchal Bengali society. This paper undertakes to explore Binodini, a finely crafted character in the Novel ‘Chokher Bali’ by Tagore, who battles over her identity breaks a fresh ground for her own, and emerges as an uncompromisingly assertive woman with a voice and brand of her own. It explores that she is not terrified by the severity of the male gaze or trodden down by the repression of the male centric society in her journey through liberty and blossoms an individual very sure of herself by breaking the image of the traditional Indian womanhood.

“Galeh Babelok” Traders in West Sumatra: The Role of Minang Women in Traditional Markets

This paper delineates the history and profile of Minang female traders operating within the “Galeh Babelok” system across three traditional markets in the province of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Traditional markets constitute an essential part of daily life, serving as hubs for meeting various socio-cultural needs. The historical presence of Minang women in these markets, particularly under the “Galeh Babelok” system, is undeniable . This study examine d the current status of Minang women traders who engage in the traditional practice of “balai ka balai” or “pakan ka pakan”. Employing a feminist anthropological approach grounded in qualitative methodology, the study presented a case analysis of Minang Women Traders in three traditional markets in West Sumatra. Data collection methods included literature review, interviews, observations, and life stories, subsequently analyzed qualitatively and descriptively. The findings underscored the enduring role of Minang traders within the “Galeh Babelok” system across traditional markets in West Sumatra. Historical documentation revealed the substantial involvement of married Minang women in the traditional market of Minangkabau. Their profile as “nan tageh” or assertive women, often characterized by dominant masculinity, is reinforced through their trading practices. Despite averaging in their 40s or older, these traders exhibited adeptness in deploying various strategies to navigate between market dynamics and familial responsibilities, ensuring the continuity of their family’s economic well-being. Keywords: Galeh Babelok, Traditional Markets, Minang Women, Adaptive Strategies, Balai ka Balai

The Representation of Female Biblical Figures in Major Israeli Discourses

Israeli girls’ names that remained prevalent over lengthy periods were examined with the aim of determining their representation in social discourses as defined by Foucault (2002). Rare names occurring three to ten times per year from 1948 to 2015 were examined as well. Foucault defined four dichotomous axes that distinguish social discourses, with each axis characterized by social normativity at one end and original creativity at the other. The four dichotomous axes of discourse according to Foucault are ‘discursive event opposed to creation’, ‘discursive series opposed to unity’, ‘discursive regularity opposed to originality’ and, ‘condition of possibility opposed to signification’. The most prevalent girls’ names were considered as representation of the social normativity, while the rare names were considered as representations of social discourse contains original creativity. 19 prevalent names were found, 12 of which stayed on the most-popular-names list for 68 years, and seven of which appeared on the list for at least 40 years. Fifteen of these 19 names are the names of female figures from the Old Testament. Eight of the names are those of the most important women in the Bible – women who also have enjoyed the greatest degree of favor in Jewish tradition. Four other names are those of assertive women whose actions were viewed unfavorably in Jewish tradition. An analysis of these names in Foucauldian terms indicated that the most-popular-names list for girls constitutes part of three simultaneous social discourses in Israeli society across its component subgroups. These three discourses are: traditional Jewish discourse, Zionist discourse, and Israeli discourse. The latter discourse has not only featured names that appeared for many years on the popular-names list; it has also featured, in more than half the cases, names belonging to the rare-names lists – a phenomenon consistent with creativity, in Foucauldian terms.

A narrative of women and war: The Finnish silent era film ‘On the warpath’

This article discusses the film Sotapolulla (‘On the warpath’) (1922), a pioneering work in the early years of Finnish cinema. By highlighting the role that women played during the Finnish Civil War (1918), scriptwriter and director Teuvo Pakkala, a well-known conservative writer, created a model of femininity for the post-war period. The construction of the female characters accords with the standards of femininity in Hollywood silent film, which featured strong, assertive women committed to the social order. Thus Pakkala’s film in significant ways follows the classical model that Noël Burch identifies as an institutional mode of representation.

Autobiography and Audre Lorde’s Matriarchal Sphere

Audre Lorde, one of the most prominent black women poets of the 21st century, is concerned about the horrors of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia and genuinely attempts to erode them through the power of art. Audre Lorde’s life and work are inspired by an arsenal of powerful women, both cruel and kind, who give her the energy to strive in a world wrought with suffering, pain, and ostracism. Lorde celebrates women of her immediate maternal descent: her mother’s sturdy female relations; she celebrates her friends and lovers; seeks sustenance from a pantheon of mythic goddesses from West Africa; and finally celebrates legendary women who have stood for the women’s cause. This paper explores how these women influenced her poetic production. Her predominantly maternal and matriarchal influences become evident when one places her within the political and intellectual background. Her life and work are not generated by the normative patriarchy that permeates Western institutions but by a self-proclaimed matriarchy. The paper employs new historicism in investigating the impact of Lorde’s family and social heritage, a heritage that was predominantly maternal and matriarchal. Lorde’s family lineage comprises an arsenal of influential female relatives and ancestors. Lorde's family is replete with maternal influences, beginning in her immediate family, where her mother was a real matriarch, and extending to her grandmother and great-grandmother. These maternal influences will push her in the long run as she matures to research women in history and myth. Discovering that the image of powerful and assertive women met with opposition in America, Lorde discovered that the erasure and silencing of women were orchestrated by patriarchy to render women helpless and malleable. Lorde, like other radical feminists, was influenced by the powerful and creative force of the mother, and she sought throughout her struggles to re-inscribe the woman into the center of the body polity.

Emergence of an Aware and Assertive Woman: A Study of Marital Relationship in the Novels of Anita Desai

Abstract: This paper deals with the study of marital relationship, one of the most complex, subtle and chameleonic human relationship, in the lives of the protagonists in the novels of Anita Desai. Through the depiction of this relationship, the novelist tries to foray into the deep recesses of her protagonists’ psyche and reveals their strivings to attain a meaningful pattern of life. Through the depiction of varied kind of protagonists, the novelist tries to show that some of her initial protagonists are quite immature, having myopic vision of life, who reflect rigidity in their personality. This extreme rigidity and egoism creates insurmountable hurdles for them in their inter -personal relations as well as adjustment with the flux of life. Various social customs and traditions which demand sacrifice and adjustment for their part are beyond their comprehension at all. The harrowing despair in their marital relations and lack of recognition in the family and society cumulatively thrusts them into circumscribed zones of isolation. On the other hand, some of her characters are made of strong stuff. They are quite mature and tend to face various vicissitudes of life with a mature, flexible and compromising attitude. Since they have a strong desire to achieve an authentic kind of existence and this zeal makes them flexible to evaluate the pattern of life in totality and eventually, they succeed in evolving a new harmonious pattern life at a higher level of maturity and wisdom.

Citra Perempuan dalam Novel Laut Bercerita karya Leila S. Chudori

This study aims to describe the dominant image of women depicted in the novel Laut Bercerita by Leila S Chudori. The problem that arises in this study is how is the image of a female character named Asmara Jati in the novel Laut Bercerita by Leila S Chudori. This research includes the type of qualitative descriptive research. The data were taken from reading the novel Laut Bercerita by Leila S Chudori in the form of words and direct and indirect sentences. Data collection techniques in this study were carried out using the read-and-note method. The data is then identified and analyzed based on the theory of feminist literary criticism from Ruthven's perspective. In this article, the image of female characters is found, including self-image and social image. Women's self-image consists of physical and psychological images. In the physical image, Asmara Jati is described as a young, assertive woman. In the psychic image of Asmara Jati, it is described as a woman with a stable psyche, tough, intelligent, brave, compassionate, and caring. Meanwhile, the social image consists of the family and society. The image in the family of Asrama Jati figures as a child, a younger sibling, and a family member with a high sense of caring and love for their parents. Meanwhile, the image in the Asmara Jati community is that of a woman who is active, caring, responsible, and a driving force for the Commission on Missing Persons.

“The Dark Path Back”: Investigating Holocaust Memory in Sara Paretsky’s Novel Total Recall

Abstract Women writers challenge the popular and critical entrenchment of male-authored literary detective fiction. A close reading of Sara Paretsky’s 2001 novel Total Recall demonstrates that the ongoing quest for social justice by her woman detective, V. I. Warshawski, is addressed through assertive women’s voices that have also transformed critical approaches to women’s crime fiction. In Paretsky’s novels, V.I. finds herself in a double bind reserved for women in both social and literary terms: having to prove her stability and effectiveness as a professional detective and as a reliable first-person narrator. Total Recall ’s investigations of contemporary corporate crime trace their origins to American slavery and the Holocaust: the novel transforms the generic mean streets of crime fiction into a transnational crimescape with a two-way trajectory between contemporary Chicago and Central Europe’s sites of mass murder. But instead of plotting a conclusion that declares triumph over such evil, the novel joins forces with historical accounts to investigate the staying power of legitimized oppression and the memory of its victims. Reading the Holocaust narratives embedded in Total Recall reveals a story of inhumanity so far reaching that it transforms Paretsky’s local Chicago crimescape into a global epic.

Freedom, Choice and Achieving Self-Realisation in the Dystopian World of Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

This study examines how the American science fiction author Octavia Butler (1947-2006) reflects the issue of how Olamina, the protagonist of Parable of the Talents (1998), attempts to establish a new religion, Earthseed, while changing her dystopian world. Butler is a distinguished novelist who brings to light the narrative on human life and challenges in a society where individuals are treated with discrimination and deprived of their rights, freedom, and independence, and takes a serious note of these topics by offering a representative portrait of the American society through her fiction. Here, we explore issues of human freedom, choice and self-realisation in a civil society by utilising a novel combination of the concepts of freedom and choice by John Rawls and Isaiah Berlin as well as self-realisation by Karl Marx as the fundamental elements to examine Olamina’s belief, attitude and the act of making choices. Our findings reveal that Olamina becomes an assertive and independent woman through two stages of self-realisation, namely self-actualisation and self-externalisation: she finds her voice, succeeds in challenging her ideological social system and, at last, successfully spreads her new philosophical ideas to another part of the world. Through our original methodology of combining the concepts of freedom, choice and self-realisation, we found that Butler has skillfully depicted the social and technological evolutions which have caused the futuristic dystopias in 2030s California, and further illustrates the ways that characters can confront these changes if given the freedom and the autonomy to act and change their oppressive existence.

‘Were they to have petticoat government in the hospital?’ The reform of nursing in nineteenth-century Lincoln

ABSTRACT Nineteenth-century interest in reforming nursing took on a greater sense of urgency following the Crimean War. The initiative of the Nightingale Fund to establish a school of nursing at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London in 1860 spurred on many provincial hospitals and associations to consider reforming nursing through better recruitment and training of nurses. This paper focuses on an attempt by a group of privileged and assertive women to introduce a modern nursing system in the Lincoln County Hospital in the mid-1860s. The problem of competing authority in the hospital, along with the gender and social class of the protagonists for reform aroused vehement opposition from some of the doctors and governors. The subsequent withdrawal of the reformers to create an independent and successful nursing institution in the city was made possible by the positive effect it had on the care of the poor and in the way it did not challenge the work of the hospital or the private practice of doctors.

Shurpankha as an assertive woman in Kavita Kane’s ‘Lanka’s Princess’ – a critical study

Indian mythology has been a subject of deep study and interest. Many people have reviewed and shared their thoughts regarding various mythological subjects. Various primary, secondary, male, female characters have been discussed on various platforms. But, there are many women characters who have not got justice regarding their lives and personality. A lot of them have been portrayed as negative and dark characters. The explanation behind their angst and revenge has been unknown or hidden. Kavita Kane in her works has tried to unravel the hidden personalities and various aspects of these characters. In this paper, the focus has been made on a very negatively approached woman character, Shurpankha, sister of Ravan, from the epic Ramayan. Was Shurpankha really hateful? What would have been the reasons behind her anguish and dark nature? Kavita Kane has made an effort to answer many such questions about Shurpankha, in her book ‘Lanka’s Princess’. Even being a princess, what might have been the reasons about her revenge taking acts, that caused war between Ram and Ravan.

Redeploying the Abjection of the Pog Gandao ‘Wilful Woman’ for Women’s Empowerment and Feminist Politics in a Mystical Context

In this article, I examine the marginalisation and abjection of strongwilled and assertive women in Dagaaba settings in rural north-western Ghana. This is done by paying attention to a local identity category known as pog gandao—‘a woman who is more than a man’. The pog gandao, or what I gloss as the wilful woman, concept is used by men and women locally to stigmatise hard-working and assertive Dagaaba women. Drawing inspiration from the reappropriation and redeployment of queer abjection for the subversion of homophobia and the violence of compulsory heterosexuality, I demonstrate how such naming or shaming into the position of a pog gandao serves to hamper initiatives by enterprising and talented Dagaaba women. Being labelled as pog gandao, it appears, is even to lose one’s status in normative gender presentation as a woman; it means to transcend into a realm beyond the masculine. But this transcendence is not enviable due to its potential to expose the subject in question to perceived supernatural harm, a serious matter in this cultural context whereby the world of human affairs is understood as thoroughly saturated with supernatural forces that structure daily and ritual comportment. I argue that the shaming interpellation of pog gandao works as the most powerful weapon against wilful women in oppressive male-centric institutions of the Dagaaba. And yet, this stigmatised interpellation also has great emancipating potential, and I conclude by exploring ways to reclaim it for undermining female subordination, and for both empowering women and for feminist politics.

The Language and Identity of Agueda in Nick Joaquin's May Day Eve: An Analysis of Linguistic Features and Stances

Language is an important device in the construction of an individual’s identity. However, Language not only identifies any particular individual but also sets its position inside the society. As a form of social behavior, language like other social behaviors, also distinguishes gender differences. This study investigates the linguistic features and the personal identity of Agueda in Nick Joaquin’s May Day Eve. This study can be used to apprehend how women were influenced by the society and the culture of the Philippines during the 1800s. The researchers use Lakoff’s Theory of Linguistic Features, and the Indexicality Principle by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) to analyze the language and identity of Agueda. Qualitative Content Analysis and descriptive research design are used to analyze thoroughly the utterances of Agueda which consist of linguistic features and stances. Based on the linguistic features and the stances analyzed, Agueda uses emphatic stress more to show assertiveness through her utterances, she also uses disalignment more, and she likes to position herself along the affective scale. The result of the study shows that Agueda is an assertive and strong willed young woman, who likes to do whatever she wants. Her utterances also show how resentful she has become after her marriage with Badoy. The conclusion can be drawn that language is an important factor in creating an identity of a person, and this identity can be formed through the stances and linguistic features, which are greatly affected by the society, culture, and people that surround an individual.

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN NEGATIVE RELATIVE ASPECTS: THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY AND COMMUNICATION STYLE

The research aimed at the exploration of gender differences in the quality of close relationships with a mother, a father, a sibling, a partner, and a friend concerning the negative exchange in the form of conflicts and antagonism, as well as the role of personality traits and communication styles in the development of individual differences. The sample consisted of 400 participants (69% females), age from 19 to 51. Data were collected using the short version of personality questionnaire Big Five Plus Two (VP+2-70), questionnaire about close relationship quality Network of Relationship Inventory (NRI), and the scale for estimating communication skills, Communicator Style Measure (CSM). The results confirmed gender specificities concerning a degree of the negative exchange in the relationship types, and their correlations with personality traits and communication style. Females had stronger negative exchange with partners and fathers, while males had it with siblings. Extraverted females had more conflicts with their mothers. Higher Openness and Positive Valence of males was followed by greater conflicts with partner and lower Antagonism with friends, whereas the higher Consciousness was followed by greater negative exchange with siblings. Daughters with more assertive communication and sons with more expressive communication had stronger degree of confrontations with parents. On the other hand, males with more assertive communication, and females with more expressive communication had stronger conflicts with partners. Stronger negative exchange of females with fathers and partners was probably due to their greater orientation to deal with relationship problems and emancipation needs. The result that more assertive women had stronger degree of conflict with parents maybe the results from the fostering of the honest communication in the family of origin. Confronting more assertive women with their parents may stem from fostering honest and directive communication in the family of origin. Given that the society pressures males to be independent, the result that more expressive males had stronger negative exchange with their family of origin had been expected. These findings showed that expressiveness indicate immaturity. The willingness of more assertive men to engage in a negative exchange with a partner indicates their involvement in the relationship.

When Do Motives to Sexually Please a Male Partner Benefit Women’s Own Sexual Agency?

Motivation to please a partner sexually, also known as sexual communal strength (SCS), has been positively associated with sexual and relationship functioning, particularly for partners. We used a critical sexuality studies approach to examine SCS as it relates to women’s own sexual agency. We also examined the potential moderating role of partner sexual coercion, defined as persistent pressure to attain sex. Specifically, we investigated whether frequency of partner sexual coercion moderates the effect of SCS on three different aspects of women’s sexual agency: sexual desire, sexual refusal assertiveness, and relational power. Participants were 172 U.S. women in dating relationships with men who responded to self-report measures. Results showed that SCS was positively related to women’s own sexual desire, regardless of how often women experienced partner sexual coercion. SCS and partner sexual coercion frequency were associated with sexual refusal assertiveness: The least assertive women reported both higher SCS and more frequent partner coercion. Sexual coercion frequency was negatively related to women’s relational power, regardless of their own SCS. These findings support educational and clinical interventions to reduce sexual coercion and suggest the concept of SCS be further refined to better account for the potential roles sexual coercion and heterosexual norms play more broadly.

“They’re the Ones Chasing the Cougar”: Relationship Formation in the Context of Age-Hypogamous Intimate Relationships

Commonly referred to as “cougars,” women who date younger men are often imagined as sexually assertive women who actively seek out and seduce younger men, therefore challenging major pillars of the traditional heterosexual dating script. Drawing on 55 semi-structured interviews with women aged 30-60 who date younger men, I explore the relationship formation process women experienced with younger men with the intent of shedding light on women’s behavior in that context. I found that, contrary to common cultural representations of “cougars,” very few women depicted themselves as seductresses who pursued younger men, with younger men passively waiting to be courted. However, the tendency to present oneself as having played a rather passive role during the relationship formation process was more pronounced among participants over 40 than among 30-something women. I argue that in the context of age-hypogamous dating, women’s ability/desire to renegotiate the gendered script for relationship formation is constrained by the common cultural discourse indicating that a woman’s worth declines with age, as well as by the cultural discomfort toward older women’s sexuality.

Perceptions of Sexual Script Deviation in Women and Men.

Traditional sexual scripts are characterized by a gendered power inequality (male dominance vs. female submission) (Sanchez, Fetterolf, & Rudman, 2012). Although gender differences in a variety of sexual behaviors have been decreasing, research into sexual scripts provides some support for the existence of traditional sexual scripts adherence. Study 1a and 1b focused on men's evaluations of sexual script deviation in women (i.e., sexually assertive behavior) and the possible disapproval of these behaviors (backlash effects). Participants (381 and 382 self-identified heterosexual men) were presented with a randomly assigned vignette describing a hypothetical sexual scenario in which a woman behaved either sexually assertive or sexually timid. Both studies indicated that men to some extent expressed disapproval of sexually assertive women. With the aim to assess if backlash effects were due to women's sexual script deviation or if there was an overall negative evaluation of sexually assertive behavior irrespective of the target's gender, in Study 2 we focused on the perception of sexually assertive behavior in both women and men (N = 268). Although we found that gender role conformity was held for women, but not for men, the results suggest that the negative evaluation of sexual assertiveness was not due to script deviation, but that there is an overall conservative attitude toward sexually assertive behavior. Our study provides some insight into the motives of traditional sexual script adherence particularly for women.

Betty Putnam: An Unpublished One-Act Play by William Carlos Williams

ABSTRACT Betty Putnam is a short play by William Carlos Williams set during the Salem witch trials. Known chiefly as a poet, Williams once thought he would make his name as a playwright. Between 1909 and 1912, he composed several plays based on early American history, which show he was already considering the usable American past that he would later construct in In the American Grain (1925). Betty Putnam was his first literary exploration of Salem, and Williams dealt with the subject twice more, in In the American Grain and in Tituba's Children (1950). By tracing Williams's engagement with Salem and how it changed from the Progressive Era to the Cold War, one sees that it mirrors that of American culture generally. The Progressive Era Betty Putnam, with its happy ending and assertive new woman, seems far removed from the dread and violence of the McCarthy period writings.

The image of super woman: a portrayal of woman in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and the millionairess

Socialism and Feminism stand first in the list of factors that influenced Shaw in creating strong women characters that must have looked arrogant and brass to the Victorian audience who had assigned a gentile and soft gender role to women. Shaw not only has created assertive women characters but he has created men with an open mind to accept such a woman as part of their society. This creation of understanding and accommodating men has complemented Shaw's women characters and has lent the space for them to move freely and interact with utmost liberty. If Shaw had created men who had narrower views on gender equality and who are confirmative, Shaw would not have created a truly explosive gender dynamics that has become the hallmark of his plays. It is the influence of socialism and socialists which empowered Shaw to create and present such advanced characters and environment in his plays.

Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor. Edited by Elizabeth J.NatalleJenni M.Simon. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. 157 pp.

Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor. Edited by Elizabeth J. Natalie and Jenni M. Simon. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. 157 pp. In this book, Elizabeth J. Natalie and Jenni M. Simon offer a series of essays focusing on how rhetorical critics can begin to understand Michelle Obama's historic presence as first African American First Lady. At heart of collection is question of Obama's agency as a speaker. It is helpful to conceptualize agency as Michael C. Leff does in his article, Tradition and Agency in Humanistic (Philosophy and Rhetoric 36: 135--47 [2003]), where rhetorical agency is movement between tradition and invention. Leff describes agency as a type of continuum, explaining that speakers build on what has come before them (tradition), but also have opportunities to say something new (invention). First Lady rhetoric, in many ways, must be grounded in tradition and, so, brings with it a set of gendered constraints (these essays further complicate those constraints by giving attention to intersection of race with gender). The authors in collection argue that, while Obama faces unprecedented rhetorical obstacles, she successfully navigates space between tradition and invention, leading to a largely celebratory analysis of Obama's public discourse. Across these essays it is evident that Obama rhetorically constructs herself as a family-oriented black woman in a public sphere that is not always welcoming to Mom-in-Chief' (5). In Chapter 2, Tammy Vigil begins her analysis with Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention address--a point before Obama has become Mom in Chief--and shows way in which Obama articulates a version of traditional femininity common to First Ladies by focusing on family and relationships. Vigil also brings lens of intersectionality to bear on this relational focus: Casting herself as a supportive wife rather than an assertive woman, Obama depicts herself in a familiar manner, encouraging listeners to perceive her as similar in stature, character and demeanor as many past First Ladies and distancing herself from stereotypical caricatures of highly educated and African American women (23). Here, Vigil acknowledges rhetorical constraints on Obama in terms of gender and race and reads her self-presentation as strategically traditional. Yet, she also marks way in which Obama moves outside of this more traditional First Lady discourse in her discussion of family. Obama remains, topically, in a fairly-safe rhetorical space for First Ladies, but what she does within that space is to move toward inclusivity rather than reifying nuclear family as ideal. Obama's rhetorical focus on family, children, and motherhood--specifically, her conceptualization of self as Mom in Chief--is highlighted in most of essays. In Chapter 3, Jeanne M. Persuit and Deborah A. Brunson point out that Obama's adherence to tradition is not viewed favorably by some within feminist circles. Though some other First Ladies may have received similar criticism, Persuit and Brunson show how history of respectability factor (45) for African Americans, along with the devalued, fetishized, and exotic image of Black women (46), constrains Obama in ways that white First Ladies have not been constrained in past. …