Construction Of Femininity Research Articles

Feminine construction in Yatchi Short Story

‘Feminism’ has emerged in the Western Countries as a political concept concerned with the welfare of women. Over time the literature evolved into a theory of understanding the depictions of women that women create. Some approaches are needed to understand a theory. Thus, to access literature in a feminist perspective, Vijayalakshmi.T in her article identified nine types of Feminist attitudes. This article aims to explore how the first of these approaches “Feminine Construction” is found in Jeyamohan`s Short story “Yatchi”.

Missionaries and the Construction of Christian Homes: Examining the Formation of African Social Identities in Colonial Malawi

Christian missions were introduced in Africa to bring commerce and civilization. Nevertheless, the modernizing ambitions of missions and the colonial government had considerable social and moral consequences, which are observable in the construction of a Christian family. This article will show that missionaries created a social revolution by prohibiting polygamy, leading to wives being treated as widows. Besides, the article will show that the construction of femininity and masculinity in mission schools was based on European culture. Eventually, some roles that in traditional society were reserved for men were defined as feminine tasks.

La Chica Moderna and the Virile Sport of Boxing: Women Boxers, Gender Politics, and Identity Construction in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s

The 1920s and 1930s in Mexico were an important moment of transition for women’s sport, as women’s interests in sport as spectators and participants increased, giving rise to social debate. Much of these debates formed part of a broader discussion about the emergence of the ‘modern woman’ or, in the case of Mexico, la chica moderna. By focusing on the representation of the modern woman boxer in Mexican newspapers and popular media, this article analyses the socio-cultural construction of femininity through the discourse of sport in the postrevolutionary context of the 1920s and 1930s. This work considers how authors and publications with close ties to the postrevolutionary regime allocated the modern boxing woman a place within the postrevolutionary project, which provided the project a progressive appeal that argued for a true social equality. However, commentators also went to great lengths to reconcile the transgressive and modern character of women boxers with the state’s more traditional discourses on acceptable femininity and clear limits remained in place for women. Nevertheless, the 1920s and 1930s witnessed a remarkable opening up of possibilities for alternative types of femininities in a context that sought to establish a new national citizen in terms of gender.

Fashion, Plastic and Myths in Color

This short article examines a photograph in a 1956 catalogue for the French department store Galeries Lafayette in the context of the country’s postwar modernization, Paris renovations and the development of the readymade garment industry. It relates the production of image to the construction and dissemination of fashion and femininity in the print media. In particular, it notes how the use of changing technologies in image production, notably Kodachrome color film, shaped and exposed these constructions. Drawing on the notion of myth, as formulated by Roland Barthes, this article asks how the image spoke to modernity’s inherent contradictions, notably between old and new, in its depiction of bodies, plastic and synthetic fabric. Finally, it shows why this was particularly relevant in the culture of postwar France.

Hashtivism’s potentials for mainstreaming feminism in politics: the Red Lips Revolution transmedia narrative

ABSTRACT Using a key symbol of the normative construction of femininity in popular culture, red lipstick and the act of putting it on, the “Red Lips Revolution” transmedia storytelling (#EzpainGorrienIraultza) examined in this study makes a contribution to understanding how feminism can intervene in masculinised and mediatised electoral spaces, transforming an area that has traditionally been one of clear male domination. Regardless of its regional scope (Basque 2016 Parliamentary Elections), this case acts as a model of how feminism can benefit from the specific potentials of digital and Twitter storytelling to promote a shift from feminised politics and parties’ quotas to a real feminist mainstreaming, contributing to current media scholarly discussion on feminist hashtivism from constructive and inclusive approaches.

Entrapment Between Narratives: The Millennial Voice and Degendering Organizational Resilience

The Covid-19 pandemic pushes organizations to innovate, adapt, and be responsive to new conditions. These demands are exacerbated as organizations respond to the triple sustainability challenge of social and environmental issues alongside economic recovery. These combined factors highlight the need for an inclusive definition of organizational resilience, the increased agility to adapt, learn, and transform to rapidly shifting external and internal conditions. This paper explores a gendered perspective of organizational resilience and the implications for degendering the concept to incorporate masculine and feminine constructs equally valuable to the theory and practices of organizational resilience during times of crisis. Viewing the organizational demands of crisis and the expectations of the millennial workforce through the degendering lens elucidates conceptualizations of gender constructions and power that limit inclusive practices and processes of organizational resilience. Data was used from focus groups of men and women between the ages of 21–35 (millennials) who have experience in the workplace and a shared knowledge of sustainability including social aspects of gender equity and inclusion. The Degendering Organizational Resilience model (DOR) was used for analysis to reveal barriers to inclusive, resilient organizational practices. The data was organized according to the three aspects of the DOR, power structures, gendering practices, and language. A unique contribution of this study is that it explores a cross-cultural gender perspective of organizational resilience focused on a specific cohort group, the millennials. Based on the findings three organizational recommendations for practice were identified. These include recommendations for policies and practices that deconstruct inequitable practices and co-create more agile structures, practices, and narratives for sustainable and resilient organizations.

“Doing Their Bit”: The USO in New Jersey During World War II

The participation of NJ women during World War II encompassed a wide array of new challenges and responsibilities. Not only were women moving into newly opened employment opportunities, but they also joined military branches, worked for the defense industry, and even played professional baseball. However, paid positions were only part of the story. Volunteerism was a significant, even integral part of the war effort, both on the home front and abroad. For women who volunteered as hostesses, the USO upheld feminine ideals of emotional labor and caregiving, emphasizing the activities that prepared young women to be wives and mothers. The ideological safety of USO work during WWII has served as a barrier to comprehensive academic consideration of their contributions on a national, regional, and local level. Demographic variations of USO clubs have yet to be analyzed comprehensively on a state-by-state basis. Research on NJ’s USO groups forms a unique narrative of women’s volunteerism and civic engagement, which upheld social constructs of femininity while impacting the war effort, especially the morale of the military, significantly.

Performing Beauty: Femininity Ideology, Neoliberalism and Aesthetic Labor Among Young Women in Mexico

This research is motivated by the norms and practices of femininity that individuals create through performances and bodily practices. It investigates the levels of women’s acceptance of the femininity ideology and neoliberalism in the upper middle class, their effects on aesthetic labor and the objectification of their bodies. It examines how the logic and techniques associated with neoliberalism shapes the construction of current femininities and shifts in the relationship between the self and the body. Through the use of quantitative analysis from data based on young middle class women in Monterrey, Mexico, this study aims to determine how women are making sense of their bodies through selfdiscipline and self-regulation, as well as the ways in which neoliberal and postfeminist constructions of the sexual self and body are made meaningful in women’s everyday lives.

Cultivating Authoritarian Submission: Race and Gender in Conservative Media

Over the last four decades, right-wing movements have brought authoritarian political forms into mainstream US politics and mobilized widespread consent for an increase in social control. This article argues that conservative media helped drive the move to the right in American political culture by cultivating the desire for command-based relations of rule on the part of listeners. Leaders of the Christian Right, hosts of Fox News, and the politicians they showcased refurbished conservative politics for an era of post-racial and gender equality by framing reclamations of privilege and authority in narratives of redemption. Identifying redemption narratives in the genres of Christian-themed self-help and conservative talk news, I show how they instill particular relations of authority in part by tethering these relations to the construction of white masculinity and white femininity.

La recepción de Lucie Delarue-Mardrus en la Edad de Plata: tensiones en torno a autoría y feminidad

"The aim of this work is to reflect on the construction of the woman writer as a public figure based on the case of Lucie Delarue-Mardrus and her projection in Spain, placing her in the framework of the tensions that surround the female condition at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although her work is translated and reviewed, it is her public figure the element that focuses the attention of the critics, as confirmed by the various references by prominent chroniclers (Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Isabel Oyarzábal, María Luz Morales or Teresa de Escoriaza). This phenomenon allows us to see the key elements of the feminine authorial construction, as the incorporation of strategies of the emerging idea of celebrity and its use as an essential mechanism to deal with the difficulty of being a woman in the public sphere"

Rewriting the Feminine Construction of a Nation in Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller

This essay highlights the way Keller’s novel, Comfort Woman (1997) explores the connection between women’s sexual bodies, colonialism and Korean nationalism. Through the resistance of heroic women characters against patriarchal definitions and feminization of a colonized nation, Keller narrates subversive feminist resistance to humiliating inscriptions of patriarchy and colonialism onto the sexual bodies of women. The text is closely analysed using tools of literary devices, in particular, subversive strategies and the idea of silences as a tool and a theme to convey the unspoken and the unspeakable. Soon Hyo’s passive silences as a comfort woman in the comfort camps and her transformation later to paranormal articulations as a shaman is interpreted as powerful forms of resistance against patriarchy’s inscription upon her body. Her silent passivity, re-interpreted as a form of active resistance becomes more meaningful as she wrestles back the identities and recognition for the thousands of comfort women that would otherwise be forgotten. Comfort Woman inquires into the links between languages, silences and subjectivity, colonial domination and Korean nationalism, sexuality and nation, resisting any attempts at separating the links. Keller invoked the power of performance and silences in the form of “strange” articulations and tropes which were culturally specific as subversive means of re-telling her story and inscribing new meanings onto women’s sexual bodies, thus rewriting the feminine constructions of a nation.

When Woman Teams Up with Monster

How has the relationship between women and monsters influenced the cultural construction of femininity? In contemporary Hollywood audiovisuals, where selfawareness of the story takes on a special importance, particular emphasis is given to the examination of the way in which one of the most memorable horror movie scenes is presented: the one in which the woman meets the monster. The classic scream of horror has been replaced by a thrilling empathic relationship, plausible thanks to its imaginary link with the idea of otherness. This rapprochement, marked by language, has developed in tandem with a process of the humanization of the monster and its influence on the archetype of the hero, which has attracted greater attention inthe construction of the history of cinema. The main question posed by this narrative strategy, in which female empowerment derives from an alliance with the monster, is how this updated scene has contributed to the cultural reconstruction of the female identity. We aim to assess the influence of this metafictional discourse, triggered by the rhetorical device of parody, on shaping a true image of women.

Mammies, brute Negroes, and white femininity in teacher education

In this article, we examine two stories about white femininity. The first, written by Danielle, was an assignment in a pre-service teacher education course. The second story is of the fictional Lily—the main character of an internationally best-selling novel. In our analyses, we pay special attention to how enduring racist images and caricatures of black people function in the complex social construction of white femininity. We conclude that teacher education efforts in the United States are undermined by the workings and power of enduring racist stereotypes in the thinking, feeling, and action of white teachers.

Female Authority And The Representation of Womanhood In H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha

Haggard’s Ayesha is the continuation of the Victorian dream novel She. H. Rider Haggard's She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is figured to be among top rated books at any point distributed: it had sold exactly 83 million duplicates by 1965. Ayesha (really articulated 'Assha'), subtitled The Return of She, who takes after She in the book, is an amazing and puzzling white sovereign who administers the African Amahagger individuals. Ayesha has enchantment controls and is undying, which makes She a dream experience book.
 Despite the fact that She and Ayesha were distributed almost twenty years separated, H. Rider Haggard stated that Ayesha was a decision to a two-section book, not a continuation. There is likewise a "prequel," She and Allan (1921). In the two books, an imaginary manager shows an original copy portrayal by Ludwig Horace Holly. In Haggard’s She, considering that some parts of the novel are so comfortable, readers might feel compelled into thinking that they are going through Haggard’s tour in Africa. Fortunately, in any event, when the plot eases back to a nearly gastropod pace, the way Haggard's depicts the African culture and scene conveys the reader along.
 Ayesha, known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, first showed up in sequential structure from 1896 to 1897 in the novel She. Ayesha is one of the marvelous, kick-ass lady characters in Victorian writing who represents the misogynist construction of femininity and embodies the femme fatale. This paper is principally concerned about the representation of feminine power and the representation of womanhood in Haggard’s Ayesha. Some questions will be investigated here. Can one consider Ayesha as a “conclusion” or a “sequel” to She since the whole novel replicates the same thematic and structural maneuvers of She? Does Haggard revive Ayesha, the “new woman”, in The Return of She respond to the threat to traditional gender roles? The findings of this study will be beneficial for the researchers, and all the undergraduate and postgraduate students of English department.

Gender Labor Policies in the Franco Dictatorship (1939–75): The Discursive Construction of Normative Femininity

Abstract This article analyzes the labor gender policies and the strategies of “genderization” put forward by the Franco Dictatorship in Spain. The Franco regime understood that women were the touchstone of society and key in both biological and sociocultural reproduction. Legislative regulations and sanctioned discourses accentuated the division between productive-public and reproductive-domestic spheres, relegating women to the latter. Nevertheless, to what extent did women embrace and challenge the regime's idealistic view of gender? This article contemplates female employment within and beyond official discourse. Oral sources used in this article suggest that socioeconomic reality overflowed the narrow limits of normative femininity. Not all women could enjoy the “honor” of embodying the exalted role of “perfect (house) wife” that the Franco regime had entrusted to them. In addition, this article explores changes in the ideal of femininity throughout the dictatorship. The Franco regime underwent crucial transformations during its almost 40 years of existence. This article argues that its adaptation had repercussions on sociocultural patterns and gender policies. Francoism built its early notion of normative femininity on the ideals of domesticity and Catholic morality, but (re)shaped the meanings of womanhood and (re)adjusted the legal system to fit the new circumstances that arose in the Cold War context.

Performances of autonomy: Feminist performance practice and reproductive rights activism in Ireland

This article considers feminist performance practices in relation to reproductive rights campaigns in an Irish context. Following the successful campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment in 2018 and the decriminalization of abortion in Northern Ireland in 2019, I explore the significance of feminist performance practices in developing discourses concerning reproductive autonomy and challenging the idealizing of motherhood. Through a discussion of key works by Áine Phillips, Amanda Coogan and myself, I outline how in deploying their bodies in their work live artists make visible the impact of oppressive gendered constructs and resist the policing and shaming of reproductive bodies in an Irish context. I demonstrate how through performing transgressive acts, live artists have ruptured the silencing surrounding both abortion and maternal experience. My article further critically reflects on the performances of the London-based direct-action performance group Speaking of IMELDA, drawing on my first-hand knowledge gained through my participation in the group’s successive performative interventions between 2013 and 2018. I discuss the group’s collective public vocalizations and, sometimes brazen, use of performance to unapologetically advocate for reproductive rights within an Irish context in a variety of social and geographical settings. I situate the performance activist aesthetics of IMELDA in voicing the intergenerational perspectives and solidarities of the London-Irish feminist diaspora as contributing to broadening understandings of Irishness. In outlining how the various performance practices discussed within this article have operated against cultural constructs of femininity and unashamedly advocated for reproductive autonomy, I locate performance as contributing to the development of feminist discourses.

Made to Connive: Revisioning Cinderella in a Music Video. From Disney to Arthur Pirozkhov: A Case Study

The article focuses on the way in which music videos can subvert and refigure the message of literature and film. The author sets out to demonstrate how a music video entitled “Зацепила” by Arthur Pirozkhov (Aleksandr Revva) enters a dialogue with the recent Disney version of Cinderella by Kenneth Branagh (2015), which, in turn, is an attempt to do justice to Perrault’s famous fairy tale. Starting out with Michèle Le Dœuff’s comment on the limitations imposed upon women’s intellectual freedom throughout the centuries, Filipczak applies the French philosopher’s concept of “regulatory myth” to illustrate the impact of fairy tales and their Disney versions on the contemporary construction of femininity. In her analysis of Branagh’s film Filipczak contends that its female protagonist is haunted by the spectre of the Victorian angel in the house which has come back with a vengeance in contemporary times despite Virginia Woolf’s and her followers’ attempts to annihilate it. Paradoxically, the music video, which is still marginalized in academia on account of its popular status, often offers a liberating deconstruction of regulatory myths. In the case in question, it allows the viewers to realize how their intellectual horizon is limited by the very stereotypes that inform the structure of Perrault’s Cinderella. This makes viewers see popular culture in a different light and appreciate the explosive power of music videos which can combine an artistic message with a perceptive commentary on stereotypes masked by seductive glamour.

The First Latina Hackathon

An event advertised as the first all-women’s hackathon in Latin America was held in México in 2015. Highly ephemeral but also highly visible, the hackathon functions as a critical site to examine how communities crystallize and evaporate, and how participants actively negotiate their hacker identities and practices across boundaries of nation, gender, race, and ethnicity. Popular discourse poses inclusivity within maker/hacker groups by proposing ways to get different or “diverse” participants to join events aimed at empowering their communities. I explore how members of marked groups are called upon to construct and manage these differences themselves within hacker spaces and “maker” formations. I first highlight how participants at the women’s hackathon aligned themselves with structures of expertise as they negotiated normative constructions of gender and femininity. Hackers continue these negotiations when they get caught up in Mexican nationalist pushes for productivity. In the final section, I unpack a surprise visit by abuelitas (grandmothers), who taught everyone a lesson on the invisibilized labor that supports communities of hackers. In a space usually reserved for young makers who understand “new” technologies, they claimed their space within “progress” and reasserted undervalued domestic work as foundational for other type of work. By weaving these three threads together ethnographically, I suggest the ways in which differences become important as Latina hackers differentially position themselves, but also align themselves, with the contradictions of treating code work as coded labor.

Performing female masculinities and negotiating femininities: challenging gender hegemonies in Swedish forestry through women’s networks

This paper addresses the discursive and spatial constructions of female masculinities and femininities in separate networks for women forest owners in Sweden. Based on qualitative research conducted with members of six such networks, I explored the spatial negotiations and performances of femininities and female masculinities in relation to hegemonic forestry masculinities. I found that the separate spaces provided by the networks enabled the women to find strategies by which to navigate the spatial relations permeated by hegemonic forestry masculinity, which empowered them to resist the subordinate position of hegemonic femininity and to ‘claim space’. The women claimed this space by asserting alternative femininities and performing embodied female masculinities conceptualized as ‘the tough forest owner’ and the ‘entrepreneurial forest owner’ to gain access to both symbolic and material spaces, including the category of ‘the forest owner’. The performances of female masculinities were largely conducted from other positions of privilege, such as class and heterosexuality, which included performances of hegemonic femininity. Therefore, these performances of female masculinities generated status rather than stigmatisation. Furthermore, the analysis showed how these masculinities and femininities were negotiated and performed in relation to forestry spatiality as well as rurality and urbanity. I argue that the spatial performances of alternative femininities and female masculinities challenge hegemonic masculinities in a way that disrupts the male exclusivity of the category of ‘the forest owner’, although the performances of female masculinities also reinforce the superior position of masculinities in relation to femininities.

Review: The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism, by Manon Hedenborg White

Review: The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism, by Manon Hedenborg White