Feminine Subjectivity Research Articles

In the Grip of Traditionalism? How Nigerian Middle-Class Working Mothers Navigate Normative Ideals of Femininity

Changing socioeconomic conditions are enticing more and more Nigerian mothers to work and pursue careers. This article explores how middle-class professional women navigate working mother subjectivities in the context of Nigeria’s strong patriarchal culture, where traditional notions of maternal femininity prevail. We argue that the working mother’s subjectivity is a key site where the struggle over gendered cultural meanings takes place. Drawing on 32 qualitative interviews, we demonstrate how a small group of women refused traditional feminine subject positions; however, most mothers either embraced or reluctantly acquiesced to traditional femininity, despite having access to broader cultural repertoires and material resources. By unveiling the complexities of the cultural appeal of traditional femininity and social penalties for breaching it, the article extends our understanding of how patriarchal cultures resist gendered change and the nuances and limits of individual patterns of resistance.

Media representation of members of parliament in Egypt: A reality of gender imbalance

AbstractThis study joins recent studies that explore the meanings of the political representation of women resulting from a gender quota, through examination of their media representation. Drawing on studies on gendered mediation and women's political representation and using a content analysis method, we examine the quantity and the quality of gender media representation of Egyptian members of parliament. The findings show a nuanced picture in which the media simultaneously propagates a conservative perspective alongside progressive and egalitarian ones. Female representatives receive less media coverage and are associated with feminine topics in a way that reproduces the gender hierarchical masculine/feminine and private/public distinction within the political sphere. Nevertheless, this biased coverage coexists with an empowering representation whereby women are more heard than seen and associated with core parliamentary activities. We conclude by addressing the potential and limits of this representation, which may alter perceptions regarding women's political participation under authoritarianism.

Gendered Consumer Responsibilization: The Constitution of Menopausal Women as Responsible Feminine Consumer Subjects

Abstract Recent decades have witnessed menopause, an inevitable, natural bodily transition come under the purview of the market. Menopausal women are increasingly expected to be informed entrepreneurs of their bodies, bringing this transition within the domain of self-regulation and responsibility. Using data emanating from institutionalized market actors (ie, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, healthcare professionals) and the accounts of consumers, we investigate the construction of responsibility in the contested field of menopause. We show that the formation of the responsible feminine consumer subject is an adjustive process generated through contestations between different articulations of subjectivity. Specifically, we identify three subject formative subprocesses and show how gender is implicated in each. Instead of following a singular path, these subprocesses culminate in two distinct, yet coexisting routes to responsibilization, either by appealing to the qualities of traditional feminine subjectivity or by aligning with postfeminist subjectivity. We extend existing theorizations by revealing how gender shapes the processes of responsible subject formation and broadening the investigation of consumer responsibilization to a personal and embodied level.

Keinen Verfasser, nur eine Verfasserin? Literarische agency schreibender und ‘geschriebener’ Frauen in Prag (1770–80)

ABSTRACT This article deals with the characteristics of female authorship in Prague in the 1770s. The moral weeklies Die Unsichtbare (1771) and Die Sichtbare (1771) highlight the differences between the Prague reading public's expectations for female writers to focus on superficial, feminine topics and the complex and sophisticated writing of the female authors themselves. Experiences of limitation due to writing in Bohemia, in less valued genres such as novels, and because of their gender in fact led to women writers such as Viktorie Rupp and Maria Anna Sager developing self-confidence as authors. A central aspect of this paper is the juxtaposition of male and female writing patterns and their contrasts, as illustrated by Sager in her novels Die verwechselten Töchter (1771) and Karolinens Tagebuch (1774). Finally, her contributions as a female writer are contextualized within the framework of contemporary literary criticism and the academic aesthetics surrounding the Prague professor Karl Heinrich Seibt.

Retranslation as a means to reinvigorate a feminist agenda: the cases of Beya Durmiente (Dj Beya) and Desertoras

ABSTRACT This collaborative feminist and transnational study revises a selection of Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s literary works. Expanding beyond literature, we focus on the theatrical realm, exploring how Cabezón Cámara’s feminist agenda in writing translates into stage adaptations. Centered on the novels Le viste la cara a Dios. La Bella Durmiente and Las aventuras de la China Iron, our analysis aligns with post-translation theories and examines Cabezón Cámara’s retranslation of the feminine subject(s), from narrations to performances. Adopting a framework that integrates multimodality, intermediality, and transdisciplinarity, we trace the construction of feminist subjectivities across various phases in the translation process, considering verbal and non-verbal elements.

Freezing for ‘unlove’: Declining fertility, heterosexual partnering and conflicting subjectivities among women pursuing social egg freezing in their 30s in Norway

This article discusses so-called social egg freezing among women in Norway. The women, single and in their thirties, link the desire to freeze their eggs to challenges with heterosexual partnering and the lingering threat of becoming ‘desperate’ due to presumed declining fertility. I show that ‘desperation’ stands for impulses, desires, priorities and strategies, which are in conflict with an ideal feminine subjectivity – the ‘strong independent woman’ – who is gender equal, autonomous, rational and self-regulating. At the same time, normative coupledom based on ‘true love’ remains at the heart of the women’s idea of an optimal way of life. Drawing on feminist sociologist Eva Ilouz’ theorisation of the effects of late capitalism on heterosexual dynamics and relationships, I show how egg freezing is pursued in order to retain and improve one’s ability for what Illouz calls ‘unlove’: to avoid and escape substandard relationships and prioritise autonomy and self-empowerment over a desire for attachment. I contend that, although in some cases (and/or for some time) experienced as empowering and an enhancement of gender equality, egg freezing remains an individualised, and largely ineffective, response to conflicts and dilemmas stemming from gendered paradoxes of late capitalist intimate normativity, where norms of ‘true love’ coupledom come into conflict with an ideal subjectivity of radical autonomy. ‘Freezing for unlove’, thus, also highlights the ambiguous effects of an individualist neoliberal feminism, which fails to adequately address material gender differences, and to problematise adjustment to a male norm as a strategy for gender equality.

‘It was too much technology … I chucked my laptop across the room': young women, networked affect and the positivity imperative

ABSTRACT Engaging with theories of networked affect, this paper highlights the importance of new ways of thinking about young women’s relations with social media beyond ‘good or bad’ narratives, and towards more affective, embodied and agentic relations with digital technologies. Drawing upon interviews with 45 young women (16–25 years), we reveal the emergence of new digital intensities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the reshaping of young women’s digital encounters. As well as highlighting the importance of digital technologies for escaping the stressors of pandemic life, digital practices surfaced creativity, connection and moments of joy. Yet for many young women, the ‘positivity imperative’ to perform proactive and productive feminine subjectivities during the pandemic re-turned their digital relations, surfacing negative affects (i.e. guilt, anger, shame) about themselves and their bodies. There was a networked affective ‘stickiness’ of these feelings, prompting some to navigate new boundaries around their social media engagement to protect their own wellbeing. In so doing, we see how the pandemic acted as a ‘jolt or spark’, activating new affective entanglements with digital technologies, and evoking new ethical and affective relations of care with bodies and subjectivities.

The trans gender subject of fashion

The T-girl is a trans feminine subject whose trans-ness is embodied sartorially in controlled environments for a short amount of time. Her trans-ness is not socially visible, her existential possibilities have accompanied the imbrication of digitality in everyday life and she escapes well-acknowledged trans feminine categories such as the Latin American travesti or the trans woman writ large. The T-girl is yet to be rigorously theorized. In this auto-theoretical psychoanalytic inquiry I propose to theorize her alongside her lovers by placing the sartorial as the de facto object of desire between them. The methodology involves culling from personal sartorial-sexual experience as well as the language around clothes found in private messages sent by trans-attracted and straight-identified men to the author, a T-girl. What does such an intimate archive tell us about the way the trans subject negotiates her desire with and through the other? Their sartorial exchanges serve as unprecedented insight into the intrapsychic mechanisms a trans subject deploys to forge a position for herself where the sartorial all but replaces the anatomical as the slippery guarantor of gender. I articulate the function of clothing in conjuring a trans-ness addressed to a ‘other’ interpellated to ratify the (trans-)gendering process. This turns out to be a rather primary dynamic that founds the speaking subject as such. And yet, the T-girl and her lovers may end up getting more than what they bargained for from their sartorial-sexual encounter. What becomes clear is the fundamental function of clothes not just to render the T-girl girl, but as exhilarating signifiers in the written and oral exchanges between the T-girl and her lovers. Particularly for the lovers themselves, who can be quick to slip from the position of the subject who enjoys feminine clothing in the other to that of the subject who enjoys wearing such clothing themselves.

Slender Waists and Severed Breasts: The Construction of Female Bodies and Feminine Subjectivities in Vaiṣṇava Bhakti Poetry

Slender Waists and Severed Breasts: The Construction of Female Bodies and Feminine Subjectivities in Vaiṣṇava Bhakti Poetry

On and In Their Bodies

In this article, I place in conversation multiple forms of violence against those who occupy the category of poor black woman in Trinidad: the abuse and premature death of these women at the hands of their partners or strangers, the physical and discursive violence against black women by the state, the theft of their children due to inter/intra-community and police violence, and the grief black women are often forced to carry. I show how these different forms of violence converge on and in black women’s bodies and, rather than being distinct in causation and effect, constitute multiple iterations of the ongoing colonialist extraction of black women’s lives for the creation of different forms of masculinist state and economic power. Ultimately, I show how masculine and feminine subjectivities are produced in tandem with racialized positionings through violence and comprehensively document what is gendered violence and how it is embodied.

Female desire in phallocentric industries: A duo-ethnographic interrogation

The persistence of workplace inequality requires female subjects to examine their place in exploitative systems of production and consumption, and to identify means for emancipation beyond masculine dominant orders. In this paper we examine our past experiences as young women in the finance and oil industries, the phallocentric and extractive engines of global capitalism. We do this by employing a duo-ethnographic approach and a feminist reading of Jacques Lacan’s ideas on sexual difference, aiming to contribute to the literature on female identification in phallocentric organizations. Our analysis reveals how we oscillated between accepting subordinate feminine subject positions linked to emotional work and striving to access ‘universal’ masculine subject positions linked to success and achievement. At the same time, we both engaged with imaginaries of uniqueness and critique, control and success in order to keep functioning in our roles. Both our stories feature moments of rupture experienced as affective embodied responses, when our organizations placed ourselves or others at risk. We analyse these as moments when cracks were exposed in our fantasmatic survival strategies, leading to our eventual exit from these industries. We conclude that while a feminist Lacanian framework provides a useful lens for understanding processes of female identification in phallocentric organizations, the quest for female desire and subjectivity outside the masculine dominant order requires other (feminist) frameworks.

Mobile Phones as an Autoethnographic Resource for Constructing Modern Gendered Subjectivity

ABSTRACT Most research on the significance of new mobile phone infrastructure for communities in the global South tracks its developmental “impacts.” Our autoethnographic approach to this question rather draws on qualitative interviews to analyze how women in Shimshal, a rural village in northern Pakistan, employ mobile phones as a discursive resource for producing modern feminine subjectivity in a context of intensifying modernization and mobility system complexity. Shimshali women’s talk about mobile phones delineates this significance by representing themselves as firmly grounded in the reproductive sphere as responsible homemakers, childhood managers and organizers of multilocal households, and as embracing the modern values of self-development and gender equality.

Red-pilled mama bears and enlightened power goddesses: Discursive constructions of feminine identities in a conspiracy theory space.

Previous research into the gendered social identity work involved in conspiracy theories (CTs) has largely focused on expressions of masculinity. The present study investigates the employment and mobilization of feminine identities in online Covid-19 conspiracy theory seminars through a critical discursive psychological perspective. The analysis finds three interpretative repertoires for representing the pandemic: the totalitarianism repertoire, the corrupt medical profession repertoire and the awakening repertoire. The most prominent feminine subject position constructed in relation to these repertoires is a maternal identity that functions as a category entitlement: mothers are represented as having a unique viewpoint on the purported pandemic conspiracy by virtue of their supposed inherent morality and concern for the welfare of children. Mothers are depicted as the cultural reproducers of the group, tasked with keeping the(ir) children safe from the influence of the conspiracy. Moreover, women are persuaded to take part in anti-conspiracy action by drawing on notions of empowerment, self-actualization, and sisterhood. These findings suggest that feminine identities, and maternal identities in particular, play a key role in the mobilizing power of CTs.

Feminitatea antimodernă și masculinitatea vampirică în nuvela Soranei Gurian „Vila Myosotis”

Anti-Modern Femininity and Vampiric Masculinity in Sorana Gurian’s Short Story “Vila Myosotis” In Sorana Gurian’s early French and Romanian writing, feminine subjectivities are pushed into an anti- modern position by an oppressive modern discourse, resulting in feelings of displacement and trans- planting that lead to a paradoxical posture which is both progressive and reactionary. Through Vila Myosotis ([1939] 1946), Gurian explores the possibility of reconciling with oneself by returning to the past. However, her escape into the world of dreams awakens repressed desires and origins. This reactionary tendency seeks to establish empathy in the face of progress and modernity, and it allows for the creation of an autonomous female subjectivity that challenges the dominant discourse of masculinity, portrayed here through vampiric imagery.

Gothic Fairy-Tale Feminism: The Rise of Eyre/‘Error’

The ways Gothic fairy tales and fairy-tale feminism interact are not always clear. An undercurrent of feminist studies of fairy tales is fueled by the 1970s Lurie-Lieberman debate, which focused on the question of whether fairy tales liberate or repress women. Meanwhile, critics such as Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Lucie Armitt have offered studies of the interplay between Gothic horror and fairy tales. However, these studies have limits, often emphasizing the violence, self-mutilation, and cannibalism of women, like those in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s versions of “Cinderella” and “Snow White”. This paper argues that “Rapunzel” (1812) is key for understanding the Gothic and feminist discourses of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). Firstly, this paper argues that a self-reflexive and self-productive relationship between subjectivity and desire shapes and disrupts the Gothic, fairy-tale, and feminist discourses of Jane Eyre, resulting in a specular feminine-I that has inspired pluralistic readings of the text. Secondly, an analysis of the Rapunzelian metaphors of ‘wicked’ hunger and ideological towers unmasks the double consciousness that not only fetters feminine subjectivity but delimits the domestic structures of marriage and home. Multiplying the ways nineteenth-century Gothicism, fairy tales, and feminism may interact, Brontë’s specular study of feminine desire makes way for a productive and agential feminine speaking-I.

Beauty hacks, wardrobe suggestions and DIY regimes for a Muslim bride: Analysis of bridal beauty vlogs

Drawing on beauty vlogs uploaded on specific Malayalam YouTube channels, the article documents the digitally mediated circulation of bodily and sartorial norms for a Muslim bride from the region of Kerala. The study explores how fashion vlogging and social media participation assist in furthering the imageries of Malayali Muslim women as neo-liberal feminine subjects by placing the role of consumption as consequential to the emerging sources of their identity. It is proposed that these vlogs catalyse the creation of a Muslim womanhood at the conjectures of cultural notions of modesty, faith and identity aspirations, arguably in the backdrop of transnational Islam and free market ideology. Furthermore, the study hints at the limitations of the analytical device of ‘Brand Islam’ in explaining facets associated with a bridal beautification scene, where the bodily and sartorial prescriptions are mediated by the diversity of co-participants involved and variations in the sartorial references endorsed.

Indonesian women leaders navigating hegemonic femininity: A Gramscian lens

AbstractHegemonic femininity is a concept beginning to receive scholarly attention, and this paper illustrates how it has become a critical factor hindering women's leadership opportunities in Indonesia. This study aims to understand how women leaders adopt, modify, or reject forms of hegemonic femininity that interpellate their constructions of subjectivity. This paper employs a discourse analysis of interview texts with 36 women in leadership positions in a Muslim‐majority country, Indonesia. The finding shows how participants navigate hegemonic femininity by constructing their version of feminine subjectivity to negotiate their gender‐leadership roles in several ways. This paper expands the critical discursive understanding of women's leadership by (1) theorizing how hegemonic femininity challenges the acceptance of women's leadership and (2) delineating the way construction of femininity affects the way women do leadership.

“Passion, Salomé”: Decadent Transformations and Transgressions of Feminine Sensuality in Huysmans, Wilde, and Strauss

Representations of Salomé have been hued in the paradoxical characterisations of the beautifully seductive and evil femme fatale. While some artists closely aligned their depictions to this Pandorian stereotype in collusion with narrative traditions of the oppressive male gaze, others challenged it through inventive reimaginations of Salomé, unveiling glimpses of the character’s complex emotive, psychological, and sensual universe that still manages to leave spectators ambivalent and discombobulated today. This article explores the transformations of Salomé in artistic representations of the Decadence across a range of media through a comparative reading of Huysmans’ novel À Rebours (1884), Wilde’s play Salomé (1891) and Strauss’ opera Salomé (1905). The interpretive changes in her characterisations – the femme fatale par excellence, the tragically fated heroine, the transgressive Decadent artist, the self-fulfilled hedonist – uncover a weaponisation of Salomé, transforming her oppressive patriarchal environmental conditions and the sexually objectifying male gaze that have often confined her, to reveal an empowered aesthetic of Decadent transgression that questions and subverts traditional gender and power dynamics, gender identities, and sensual feminine subjectivities.

‘A Walking Study in Demonology’: Postfeminism and Popular Misogyny in Jennifer’s Body (2009)

This article analyses the 2009 horror-comedy directed by Karyn Kusama, Jennifer’s Body. I describe how this female-centred horror film critiques the postfeminist or neoliberal feminine subject from an angle that aligns most comfortably with antifeminist sentiments and arguments from the centre-right and right. I discuss how a gendered neoliberal discourse of individualism, and the idea that the individual must be ultimately bear responsibility for their own biography, renders the titular character as an illegible subject of sexualised violence. I argue that the film naturalises threats of sexual violence, attributes blame to the violated female body, and renders her illegible as a victim or as person worthy of sympathy and support. I demonstrate how the film is prescient of secular forms of exclusion, specifically popular misogyny and conforms to some of popular misogyny’s circulated myths and philosophies regarding female sexuality.

Students’ Perceived Academic Self-Efficacy by Gender and Subject Domain

The aim of this study is to test for possible gender variations in student perceived self-efficacy across six subject areas. More specifically, it examines whether students would rate their perceived self-efficacy in stereotypically male-dominated and female-dominated academic subject domains with respect to the gender variable. A self-designed questionnaire was employed to collect data from 367 high school students in different Moroccan public high schools. The data were then analyzed using Principal component analysis to identify the factors that contribute to the variance. T-tests were used to account for possible gender differences in students’ perceived academic self-efficacy. The results revealed that male students displayed higher self-efficacy scores in mathematics and sciences while female students showed higher self-efficacy scores in languages. This might reinforce the stereotypical belief that males and females are better in masculine and feminine subjects, respectively. Unexpectedly, female students exhibited higher scores than males in philosophy and in the perceived overall academic self-efficacy. Recommendations for educational practice are discussed.