Academic Feminism Research Articles

Iranian Women’s Uprising: Lessons for Euro-American Academic Feminism

Abstract This paper reflects on representations of the convergence of Islam and feminism in light of the recent uprising of Iranian women. Most of the existing literature discussing Muslim women’s rights are locked in a dichotomy of approaches, one being prejudicial and the other apologetic. The prejudicial approach is a (neo-)Orientalist one. It understands Muslim societies as backward and their redemption in abandoning Islam and following the lead of the “West.” The apologetic approach is a multiculturalist one, advocating most prominently by academic feminists based in Europe and United States. In trying to reclaim agency for Muslim women, this approach denies real oppressions happening in Muslim societies, and as a result of Islamic practices. Inspired by Iranian women’s fight for freedom, this paper challenges the aforementioned dichotomy, and instead calls for a third approach that begins with, and responds to, the lived experiences of women living in Muslim societies.

Feminist silences and silencing the critique of Gaza genocide

In this short intervention, I reflect upon the ongoing genocide and reasons for the silence of many academics, and specifically that of feminist academics, as the genocide has unfolded. I propose ways how it is possible, indeed indispensable, for academic feminists to connect with it from our analytical perspectives. I intend to push us to think how we all, through our critical feminist scholarship, could contribute more and better towards a future without genocides.

Gender and terror tangled in the weeds: Poison Ivy between eco-feminism and eco-terrorism

ABSTRACT Eco-Terrorist. Femme fatale. Botanist. Environmentalist. Scientist. Villain. DC’s Poison Ivy has been challenging ideas about human interactions with the planet since 1966. Exploring alternative portrayals of femininity, power and plant liberation, Ivy sits at a unique intersection between female and plant empowerment – which is complicated by her criminal activities. By examining recently published comic book stories of Poison Ivy in conjunction with academic feminist and terrorism theory, this paper investigates how these two ideas intertwine. Ivy’s approach to the environment and her engagement with nature are inextricably linked to violence in the form of eco-terrorism, and this paper unpacks the extent to which this calls into question her portrayal as a plant-empowered female protagonist. In this way, the article explores ideas of identity and autonomy at the crossroads of feminism and botany through alternative representations of eco-feminism, but also reveals a number of provocative tensions at this very intersection.

Feminist Praxis in Exile

This work is a collaborative attempt to historicize our experience as feminist academics in neoliberal settings across different countries (Turkey, Canada, the United States) in the last two decades. We narrate how we learned to act as women academics in certain male and nationalist and/or racialized settings in neoliberal moment(s). We refrain from victimhood accounts as well as the charm of heroic feminist stances. We tell our stories in terms of our relations to the socio-economic contexts that host neoliberal universities, to our presence on neoliberal campuses, to the academic circles that we happen to join, and from which we are excluded

Negotiating beauty: exploring beauty narratives of Chinese women in different life stages

ABSTRACT Under the one-child policy in China, post-80s women have experienced dramatic social, economic, and political changes that differ from previous generations. This article explores post-80s women’s experiences of beautification in their different life stages from a feminist perspective, drawing upon 14 in-depth interviews with post-80s women to examine their perception of beauty and beauty practices in different life stages. Three main themes emerged that were intricately associated with two distinct life stages. During their transition from schoolgirls to young women, (1) participants perceive their younger selves as naïve, passive receivers of the beauty culture. When transitioning from young women towards becoming wives and mothers, (2) their values regarding beauty shift from emphasizing outer beauty to emphasizing inner beauty. (3) They also transition to embracing natural beauty standards. This paper argues that these women’s perceptions of beauty and beauty practices are fluid and change across different life stages. ‘Trivialised’ everyday beauty discourse exists to enable them to negotiate beauty practices and gender roles. This research suggests that young Chinese women, especially those leaving high school and entering university, would benefit from readily accessible academic feminist knowledge and debate regarding beauty culture to facilitate critical thinking and informed decision making.

Care ethics and critical friends: feminist research practice as an insider/outsider

Building upon its development in educational scholarship, feminist scholars have incorporated the concept of ‘critical friend’ into their methodologies. Within political science, feminists have articulated critical friendship as relational research praxis, applying the concept to relationships between feminist academics and gender experts in institutions. We bring this research into conversation with feminist care ethics, asking how commitments to care ethics interact with commitments to being a ‘critical friend’ in feminist political science research. Based on interviews with feminist researchers, we argue that care is intrinsic to feminist research and underpins friendship. Whether or not it is explicitly articulated, the concept of ‘critical friend’ carries assumptions about the centrality and practice of care. These findings suggest that feminist scholars need to surface care explicitly in methodological discussions and articulate caring strategies, including self-care. Such surfacing must include acknowledging care as a source of depletion and nourishment, as well as fundamentally political.

Gender Sensitizing Parliaments: Reflections on Becoming a Feminist Academic Critical Actor

Informed by my secondment to the UK Parliament in 2015–2016, and the production and reception of The Good Parliament report—which offered a blueprint for a diversity-sensitive House of Commons—this article reflects on my experiences becoming a feminist academic critical actor. This new type of critical actor extends the conceptualization first developed by Childs and Krook (2006, 2008). A distinctiveness vis. Chappell and Mackay’s (2021) concept of the “feminist critical friend” is also drawn: In addition to researching institutional change and supporting others in their reform work, the feminist academic critical actor is essential to instigate and institute institutional change. In this, the feminist academic critical actor is engaged in quotidian persuasion work and is both the agent as well as the analyst of research, critically reflecting on the dynamics and actors of institutional status, change, and resistance, including their own acts, in situ and after. In making the case for the feminist academic critical actor, the academic is recognized as doing something different, begging important questions of responsibility and accountability, and the opportunities and costs of engaging in such acts, particularly for minoritized and/or precarious academics. In the latter part of the article, I sketch out some of the dilemmas located in the questioning of my authority and legitimacy, and concerning the harm that I faced as a relatively privileged aspirant feminist academic critical actor, acting to rework the highly masculinized institution that is the UK House of Commons.

‘There’s nowhere for us’: spatial and scalar experiences of judgement amongst young women in the UK

ABSTRACT This paper addresses girls and young women’s experiences of spatial forms of judgement in the public spaces of their local areas. It posits the feminist question: what is the relationship between judgement, gender, youth, and the material realities that make up the public realm? Findings are derived from two seven-week long peer research projects on public space and gender with 13 individuals aged 16–27 who identified as young women from Trowbridge, Crewe, and London (UK). We suggest that young women do not only experience judgement interpersonally but as a physical material reality that permeates their daily lives on various scales from the objects that compose the public realm – a bench; to delineated spaces – a playground; to whole networks of spaces – the high street. Through these three scales, we argue that physical manifestations of judgement – far from being innocuous or subtle – shape the geographies that young women occupy and their affective experiences of public space. These experiences should not be viewed as totalising, however; young women navigate such realities and in many cases adopt techniques to overcome them. Using an intersectional feminist perspective, our paper argues that gender is not only inherent to the built environment but constituted through its material realities. We respond to both a recent push amongst feminist academics to draw attention to the inequalities wrought in the physicality of place; and a longstanding neglect within urbanism, planning, design, and feminism to address meaningfully youths, especially young women, and their experiences of – and exclusions from – public space.

Az interszekcionalitás mint elméleti keret a migráns munkavállalók egyenlőtlenségekkel és társadalmi pozicionálással kapcsolatos tapasztalatainak tanulmányozásához

Intersectionality depicts the intricate interplay of various social categorizations in shaping the experiences of individuals or communities rather than single categorization alone. This article attempts to introduce intersectionality as an essential theoretical framework for research and analysis of migrant workers' lived experience with social inequalities, and at the same time, their social positionings. Initially a critique of academic feminism from a Black activist and more inclusive perspective, intersectionality has been quickly adopted by researchers from other fields as a framework due to its usefulness in researching inequalities. By tracing intersectionality back to the context where Crenshaw coined the term, together with the presentation of its key proponents and analyses of two case studies, this article hopes to shed light on the way intersectionality can be an essential tool to explore the way migrant workers employ their multiple and intersecting identities to seek upward social mobility.

Whose feminism is it anyway? Reinterpreting digital media and feminisms from the non-metropolitan global south

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to reflect on the ways in which a non-metropolitan academic feminist community engages with digital media to reimagine the discipline of Women’s Studies, and consequently feminist politics. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Women’s Studies Centre at a university in Tamil Nadu, India, this paper moves away from the framework of the digital as simply enabling or empowering, and instead seeks to examine these digital cultures as shaped by the particularities of their geographic coordinates, and as part of a larger media environment which is characterised as much by continuities as it is by innovations. In doing so, it attempts to understand feminisms as media phenomena that are actively shaped by and shaping media technologies and discourses. It argues that Women’s Studies scholars in these locations, operating from hybrid geographical and digital places, enable the possibility of decentring feminist scholarship and thus allow for a reframing of the digital. To do this, it focuses on three distinct areas of engagement—the co-creation of knowledge in Tamil language Wikipedia, interactions on social media platforms, and their engagements with little magazines in their online avatars.

Strategies to promote dignified and feminist academia: some collaborative reflections from Chile

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars around the world warned about increasing gender inequalities within academia. In this context, we created Red Feminista de las Ciencias Sociales to support initiatives among women researchers in Chile. Our objective is to appeal for gender equality in academia and to promote structural changes that guarantee dignified feminist academia in the social sciences. This article draws on various self-training and discussion activities developed by the Red Feminista between mid-2021 and mid-2022 to discuss the role of women in academia, with implications for other marginalised groups in Chile and possibly other countries where inequality in academia is also a reality. Based on our discussions, we propose strategies to promote a decentralised, decolonised and feminist social science academia that guarantees gender equality as a fundamental human right and as a crosscutting axis in producing knowledge and access to it. We organise these strategies into four pillars: 1) equity and justice in the production of knowledge, 2) dignified work conditions in the production of knowledge, 3) a work environment free from harassment and 4) the democratisation of access to knowledge. Whilst these aspects have been studied in other countries, this article addresses the specific context of Chile. We argue that it is possible to reflect on feminisms (in plural) within academia and propose practical strategies for establishing new dynamics through collaborative work.

From Theory to Action: A Saudi Arabian Case Study of Feminist Academic Activism against State Oppression

This article explores the intricate landscape of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, an authoritarian state within the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC), where the pursuit of modernization strategically utilizes women’s issues as symbols of national identity and markers of progress. The article focuses on the transformative potential of academic activism, exemplified by the work of Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi, in countering oppression against women. It demonstrates how women navigate the realms of academia and activism to reshape gender dynamics and shape their nation’s modernization trajectory. By emphasizing the critical intersection between academic inquiry and activism, this article dispels the misconception that academia and activism are mutually exclusive. In contexts such as Saudi Arabia, where women’s rights face suppression, this intersection emerges as imperative for informed research and frontline advocacy, effectively addressing state-sponsored violence. Furthermore, this article critically evaluates the persistent challenge of feminist neo-Orientalist scholarship, which often distorts the depiction of Saudi women’s experiences. It offers a contribution to a nuanced understanding of women’s theorization that includes the ethico-political context within which women operate.

Gender Justice and Feminist Politics: Decolonizing Collaborative Research

The most prominent social effects of the drug war in Mexico are the criminalization of poverty and increased rates of feminicide. Feminist academics and community leaders have been developing and working hand in hand to find the most appropriate methods to document gender-based violence and feminicide to shed light on the impunity that hides the systemic dismissal of women’s lives. This essay presents a critical analysis of my own positionality as a feminist and academic ally in building a collaborative research alliance with indigenous women leaders who are politically engaged in the production of knowledge from an intersectional perspective that adequately reflects the matrix of violence that affects the lives of indigenous women in urban and rural areas. This process has been fruitful and promising, although it has also entailed challenges and contradictions arising from disparate meanings of gender justice and the lack of encounter of feminist/indigenous politics of resistance.

On possibility

Higher education institutions have historically enabled and aided epistemicide, or the marginalisation, annihilation and devaluing of the knowledge of those beyond university walls. Twenty-first century universities therefore face the important task of transforming teaching and research in ways that broaden epistemic access, incorporate various knowledge systems, and ensure local relevance. Here, academic feminism, especially postcolonial feminism, and community engagement may provide a way forward, as both projects serve to deconstruct the binary between ‘knower’ and ‘non-knower’, contributing to epistemic justice. In isolation, however, these projects have not yet made enough progress in pursuit of university transformation. This essay offers a preliminary exploration of the connections between community engagement and postcolonial feminism, and the ways in which a mutually beneficial relationship between the two may enhance each project's contribution to epistemic justice. It brings together literature on feminism and community engagement, linking this literature to the ideas of postcolonial feminism. Focus on postcolonial feminism specifically emerges from the recognition that universities do not only need to transform, but also decolonise. Ideas put forward in this writing are interspersed with my subjective memories and recollections of my lived experiences, spanning two universities and continents.

Woman, Life, Freedom, and the Question of Multiculturalism in Iranian Studies

The vast uprisings across Iranian cities in the fall of 2022 caught many of Iranian studies scholars and academic feminists in the diaspora off guard. My first confrontation was with trauma. Like many others, I worried about the lives and safety of my loved ones, political dissidents and prisoners from different ethnic backgrounds, feminists and queer activists on the ground, and, of course, the millennials and Gen Z, who unexpectedly emerged as the new revolutionaries. However, with the first wave of emotional encounters settled, the uprising unlocked another level of cognitive puzzlement critical to my academic life. I struggled to find comprehensive theoretical frameworks and supporting scholarship within Iranian studies or Iranian academic feminism to help my media and scholarly audiences grasp what was unfolding. In this reflective piece, I discuss how the scholarship of Iranian studies and feminism/s formulated the question of gender in liberal and radical essentialist multiculturalism and argue that Woman, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi; WLF) urges us to adopt an antiracist and radical democratic approach, deconstructing the imagined Iran in the scholarship, and reconstructing it as a welcoming and inclusive discursive space for racialized and queer Iranians.

Stretchy and Tense: A Diffractive Auto/Ethnography of Privilege With Yoga Pants

The contemporary yoga industry is entangled in many contradictions. While yoga is intended to be an inclusive, liberatory practice, its contemporary iterations enact exclusion through an industry that often privileges able-bodied, affluent, white women. As a yoga scholar-practitioner who embodies these identities, I am troubled by how my teaching and studies of yoga further replicate power imbalances. In this article, I interrogate privilege and power as they emerge with yoga pants. I draw upon Barad’s cutting together-apart in a diffractive auto/ethnography. I make literal cuts through the fabric of my yoga pants, as reflections, reactions, and interview transcripts make figurative cuts through self-image, body-image, and feminine norms. I consider how this methodology materializes an entanglement of affective forces, power, and critical feminist academia that is useful in exploring possibilities for change. This inquiry does not conclude, but rather acknowledges an imperfect and ever-evolving interrogation of embodied power as it shapes intellectual inquiry, and spaces of yoga practice.

Affective alignment and epistemic polarization: the case of feminist research in the neoliberalized university

ABSTRACT This article explores affective alignment and epistemic polarization in the field of feminist research, resulting from the neoliberalization of the universities and a performance-oriented research economy. Previous research has described and analysed the ‘epistemic splitting’ that feminist scholars engage in to live up to standardized performance measures and be perceived as ‘proper knowers’ in the neoliberalized university. This article is based on data from 26 interviews with feminist academics, presented as 5 composites, that let us in on their practices and socially organized experiences within the neoliberalized academy. I draw on Sarah Ahmed’s theory of affective alignments to analyse how practices of epistemic splitting are affectively instigated and impelled.

Feminism and the Impasse of Whiteness; or, Who's Afraid of Rachel Doležal?

Who can forget Rachel Doležal—the Africana Studies instructor and head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP who was outed in 2015 as “born white to white parents” after years of presenting herself as a light-skinned Black woman. By taking up the controversies that have followed Doležal, this paper considers the multifaceted ways that she constitutes a quintessential bad feminist object, even as her “alibi” (which is more a defense) draws on academic feminism's own anti-essentialist investment in social constructionist theories of race and racial identity. In doing so, I am not interested in condoning or rescuing Doležal from critical condemnation but in exploring the problem of thinking about Rachel Doležal for feminist analysis.

Feminist Approaches In Islamic Studies

The purpose of this writing is to understand 3 things: first, the concrete form of the feminist approach. Second, the factors that influence the existence of a feminist approach in Islamic studies. Third, the implications of academic feminist approaches to the dynamics of Islamic studies. The author uses the literature method by using a feminist approach in studying Islam. The results of this study show that first, feminist etymology comes from the word femme (single woman) who fought to fight for the rights of women as a social class. In terminology a women's movement that demands full equality. Second, internal factors include low knowledge and understanding of the community about religious values related to the role and function of women, the reality of Muslim society that still experiences gender bias, as well as the essence of women's bodies.external factors include the number of religious interpreters who harm the position and role of women as well as patriarchal culture that has long dominated in society (political, economic, and biased interpretation of religious texts gender). Third, positive impact: The existence of the term career woman makes women become more independent women, women are not oppressed by the capitalist system, and are productive in doing things outside the domstic. Negative impact: Negative impact (the birth of various lesbian feminism movements or the practice of free sex between women and women), and There are several ideologies of the feminism movement that are not in accordance with Islamic corridors

Feminist Academic Activism in English Language Teaching: The Need to Study Discourses on Femininities Critically

Social research into English Language Teaching (ELT) has a long history. Within it, gender studies have gained ground in recent decades, with special focus on materials and resources. However, a proper integration of the category of femininity has not yet been achieved. The article offers an ample, argumentative, narrative literature review of the main realizations of femininity, as theorized in recent years, such as emphasized femininity or entitled femininity, as well as some other concepts like ambivalent sexism and postfeminism. It is written as the second item within a series of papers that aims to theoretically support the assumption of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis as a suitable method to discover how all these social phenomena interact in ELT contexts, helping to shape its (gender’s) hidden curriculum. The paper concludes the necessity of integrating the issue of femininities in teacher training programs and in social research in ELT, for the sake of making this field more a liberating practice and less a means of (re)production of (gender) inequalities. To do so, it offers areas of interest for critical researchers and ELT practitioners to carry out such empirical investigation, which is the upcoming stage in this sequence of publications.