Feminist Research Articles

The relationship between feminist collective action and social media engagement

Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of online collective feminist actions on social media participation and the perceived value of social media as part of the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA). Design/methodology/approach A mixed methodology is used. Within the SIMCA model in the context of feminist collective actions, social identity, group-efficacy and fear predicted the intention of online collective action participation in the first part (quantitative) of the study. Contrary to predictions, the influence of anger on the intention to participate in collective action was negative. In-depth interviews are conducted in the study’s second (qualitative) part to investigate why individuals do not participate in collective actions despite their anger at violence against women. Findings The concept of online feminist collective action, from the perspective of the SIMCA model, deals with violence against women in the context of social marketing, revealing the importance of online collective actions as an antecedent of social media participation and the perceived value of social media. The possible causes of the negative impact of anger, which is an important emotion within the framework of the SIMCA model, on online feminist collective action were determined, and a contribution was made to the social marketing literature in the context of women’s rights. Originality/value The study makes three major contributions to the literature. First, women’s rights are addressed in the context of online collective action, an issue that has received little attention in social marketing. Second, in the context of the social identity theory of collective action, online collective feminist action and its predecessors are addressed. Finally, the Turkish case is used to highlight the probable causes of anger’s negative impact on collective action.

Perempuan dan Politik: Analisis Kesetaraan Gender Dalam Tayangan Film Barbie Tahun 2023 Dalam Perspektif Feminisme

In the era of globalization and rapid media development, films as a form of popular entertainment have a significant influence in shaping society's understanding of gender equality and feminism. This research aims to analyze gender equality in Barbie films from a feminist perspective, with a focus on Indonesia's young generation, towards gender equality for women in the family and public spaces. The film was chosen as the subject of study because it has the potential to shape the views of the younger generation regarding gender issues and the feminist movement in Indonesia. In line with this aim, this research has a qualitative approach, with an explanatory type of research through case studies. For data collection techniques through primary data and secondary data. Primary data through in-depth interviews, and secondary data through library research and document studies. The theories used are The Politics of Presence by Anne Phillips and The Media of Film by Triana Robbins, Peter Coogans, Bradford W. Wright, and Will Broker, and Tolstoy. The results of this research are to provide a better understanding of variations in public perceptions of gender equality in Barbie 2023, as well as how identity politics factors, including gender identity and patriarchal culture, influence these perceptions. These findings provide in-depth insight into the role of entertainment media in shaping the attitudes and political views of Indonesia's young generation towards gender equality with a focus on gender issues, as well as assisting policy makers in designing communication strategies that are more sensitive to gender equality. The patriarchal culture in the film Barbie 2023 is still a big obstacle to gender equality. The Barbie film helps highlight this issue and invites society to give equal rights to women.

Balāgah al-Jasad al-Furjūwī baina al-Ta’bīr al-Ĥarakī wa al-Kalimah al-Manṭūqah Masraḥiyyah “Kharīf” Numūżajā

This research aims to analyze body rhetoric between motor expressions and spoken words in the play "Kharif" as a model for the work of director Asmaa Houri. This qualitative research has a case study type of research on literary appreciation in drama performances in Morocco. The research data is in body rhetoric played by several drama actors. Data collection techniques use in-depth observation and documentation. The data analysis uses data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion. The research results show that the body is important in constructing a drama performance. Rather, the motor elements contribute to the production of a diverse group of connotations. Several topics that shape the picture of contemporary drama in Maraco include women's movements and the duality of body and soul, men's and the duality of presence and absence, body language related to eye movements, and silence and the body in choreography.

Intersectional Differences in Perceptions of Feminism and Implications for Activism

Despite the centrality of activism to the feminist movement, societal stigma, and misunderstanding of feminism’s goals have led to difficulty in eliciting united activism. Furthermore, much of the historical feminist and women’s studies literature has failed to account for the perspectives of individuals with multiple, diverse intersecting identities (e.g., race/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic class, and education level), contradicting the values of equality and inclusivity for which the movement stands. The present study took an intersectional approach in measuring feminist identity development, self-labeling, and engagement in activism, using a range of demographic questions and assessing experiences of sexual harassment and informal education. Results indicated that increased feminist self-identification and endorsement of feminist attitudes and values predicted increased engagement in activism. Additionally, a qualitative approach was used to investigate updated, diversified perceptions of feminism. Content analysis highlighted the need to emphasize the centrality of intersectionality and inclusion within feminist research as well as the Westernized feminist movement.

Somos Pluri: Embracing the Diversity of Abya Yala's Feminist Movements

Somos Pluri: Embracing the Diversity of Abya Yala's Feminist Movements

Congealing Binary Sex/Gender Inequalities Through News Stories About Intersex and Transgender Athletes

ABSTRACT Through the lens of Feminist STS, we explore Danish newspaper stories about sex hormones. We build on Haraway’sconcept of the material-semiotic and Roberts’ understanding of sexhormones as bio-social messengers of sex to explore how the borders of binary sex/gender are policed in stories about intersex and transgender athletes. We combine these Feminist STS concepts with theconcept of benevolent sexism from social psychology to investigate stories about how women are understood or defined in elite sports. We show that stories about sex hormones often are narrated as stories about protecting ciswomen, and that the argument for hormonal interventions often is entangled in a form of benevolent sexism,implying that stereotypical ciswomen need protection. However, the people who the stereotypical ciswomen are narrated as needing protection from, are not; (a) cismen, (b) a science which upholds a bio-essentialist definition of women, or (c) the cultural norms in organizations dominated by men, but rather intersex and transgender people who challenge (or embody a challenge to) the binary sex/gender hierarchy. In these sports stories, science about sex hormones isused to reproduce a benevolent sexist narrative that reiterates ciswomen as vulnerable and narrates intersex and transwomen as the primary threat.

Cooking Pilaf with Words: Intersubjectivity and Feminism in the Armenian Transnation

ABSTRACT Using original oral history research conducted in 2019, this study documents the voices, values, and priorities of feminists in the contemporary Republic of Armenia, revealing how interviewees came to feminist consciousness and how they conceptualized feminism. Interviewees articulated which feminist issues they believed to be most pressing in Armenia, including domestic violence, LGBTQIA rights, sexual education, militarism, and misogyny and homophobia in the society and the church. They expressed hopes and concerns regarding the sequelae of the “Velvet Revolution” of 2018. Interviews were conducted with twenty Armenian women diverse in age and occupation, all of whom self-identified as feminists or were deeply involved in feminist activism. These interviews subvert nationalist claims that feminism is intrinsically Western and antithetical to Armenian tradition, providing instead an alternative narrative of Armenian feminism as emerging syncretically from indigenous cultural elements and Western feminism. I theorize intersubjectivity between researcher and interviewee when both are members of a transnation—a nation consisting of those living in the nation-state and those living in permanent diaspora—arguing that there is a web of interconnectedness between researcher and interviewees that complicates the usual insider/outsider oral history relationship. The interview encounter shapes the feminism of both researcher and interviewee.

Women, peace and security: Digitalization and cyber feminist solidarity building in the global South

Since its launch in 2000, the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and resulting WPS agenda are widely used by intergovernmental, governmental, and civil society actors to advance women's participation in peace and security matters. This paper investigates WPS-cyber sphere connections to uncover the implications for the WPS agenda in the digital realm. We ask: How can digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate solidarity building and efforts to support the WPS agenda? Building on WPS scholarship and cyberfeminism, we explore our question through Nepal and Sri Lanka, both postwar countries located in South Asia that demonstrate digital feminist future possibilities. Using primary sources from social media and secondary publications, we argue that there is potential for solidarity building in WPS digital networks. This paper contributes to understanding the digitalization of women's movements, building digital feminist solidarity, and the cyber realm's potential for the WPS agenda.

Activism and gender equality policy in the Swedish film sector from the second wave to #metoo

This article seeks to unpack variations in feminist film sector activists' articulations of collective grievances and demands for change since the mid-1970s and compare them to how gender equality is articulated as a problem in public policy. Based on an analysis of problem representations found in three instances of women's mobilization – from the second wave to #metoo – the article argues that there seems to be a consensus about the appropriate boundaries of what problems can be targeted by policy. Problem representations found in gender equality policies in the film sector do not verbalize structural inequalities. However, feminist activists interpreted them to support their ariculations of structural problems. Feminist activists problem represntations include testimonies of sexual harassment and violence, articulations of structural inequalities, and the promotion of women's separatism. The article also identifies a discursive dislocation produced by critics to gender equality reforms in conjunction to #metoo. The dislocation is produced by successfully opposing gender equality to artistic freedom and denying the existence of structural gender inequalities.

Of Women Who Move Forward: Sonia Rykiel’s ‘démode’

Through the central concept of movement, interpreted in three different ways, this article delves into the life and work of French fashion designer and author Sonia Rykiel, who treated fashion design as a form of transmedial écriture. Rykiel’s unruly and innovative concept of the ‘démode’ was launched in the context of a generational and relational movement of resistance against authority, liberating women from the changing diktats of the fashion industry (breaking out of generational hierarchies and frameworks of fashionable time). Secondly, it was an embodied and feminist movement, a democratization of fashion enabling the physical mobility of women who wore her skirts with undone hems, as well as reversible, adaptable jersey sweaters with exterior seams, central components of the démode concept. The démode also allows for a contextualization of Rykiel’s work with regards to the notions of écriture féminine and female pleasure as expressed by French feminists of her day, including Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Antoinette Fouque of the MLF (Mouvement de la Libération des Femmes). As such it is a breaking free of patriarchal structures, including garment construction, as well as breaking free of the masculinist ’68 revolution. Finally, the movement between different media, from garments to writing and “written garments” (transmediality) is analyzed as an artistic statement, expressing a desire to be both naked/ blank page as well as to write and to dress oneself.

‘Yeah, embrace your anger. Fuck them.’: using feminist collaborative autoethnography and an ethics of care to (re)imagine our position as disabled women in academic spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

In this article, we argue that a Slow Feminism, which evolves through the slow but consistent support of other women that is embedded in care, compassion and constructive challenge against patriarchal expectations, is essential for the future of feminist praxis within higher education. This work emerged from our coming together to reflect-on-action on our experiences as disabled, women, postgraduate researchers in different disciplines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Feeling ‘othered’ by and invisible to hierarchal structures, we sought to understand our individual challenges through a collective lens. Relational ethics and a praxis of care in line with feminist epistemology underpinned our systematic ‘feminist collaborative autoethnography’, whereby we critically engaged with individual reflections and together in online meetings to interpret shared social, emotional and structural challenges. In this article, we draw on our experiences sharing this data through poetry, during the stage of our collaborative project in which we utilised ‘poems’ to identify the challenges of being a disabled woman navigating higher education, and the resistance we employed individually, and collectively, in support of one another. Through this process, we challenged the neoliberal, patriarchal and oppressive systems that we are forced to engage with daily and our own complicity in them. Using our individual, collective and overlapping voices, whereby we recognise the tensions and supportive narratives created by and within our research conversations, we identify that feminist activism and feminist futures are not solely a response to extreme events.

Muslim Women Emancipation Discourse: Analyzing the Legal Thoughts of Muhammad Quraish Shihab

This article aims to analyze several issues on women in Muhammad Quraish Shihab's fatwās (legal opinions) contained in several of his works in the form of questions and answers. This study departs from the existing studies on Muslim women's emancipation movements, particularly which have become a common trend in the modern Muslim world, including in Indonesia. Shihab's thoughts on Muslim women are worth studying because he attempts to unravel the primary Islamic religious texts that deal with women's issues within their initial context to provide religious instructions for Muslim women today without necessarily renouncing the traditional methods of reasoning. This article argues that Shihab's articulation of Indonesian women's fiqh (jurisprudence) using exegetical logic opens a broader space and provides an alternative for more emancipatory interpretations of religious texts operating within the grand corridor of Islamic religious and intellectual tradition.

Contesting the universal claims of Western feminism: Black feminism and reproductive rights in France and the Overseas Departments (1960s–1980s)

This article sheds new light on the history of French feminism during the crucial period between the 1960s and 1980s, and it does by so opening up the range of actors as well as the geography and chronology considered. More specifically, it reconsiders the battles for reproductive rights: the liberalisation of contraception in 1967 and of abortion in 1975. Focusing on the perspective of those sitting on the margins of reproductive citizenship and of the standard narratives of the feminist movement – immigrant women and their organisations in France, and civil society groups in the Overseas Departments ( Départements d’Outre-Mer, DOMs) – as well as addressing the distinct reproductive regimes in the DOMs, allows for a reconsideration of French post-war pronatalism, and breaks away from what has long been the standard narrative of Western ‘second-wave feminism’, globalising and de-centring its history.

The debate between the universal and the local in the approach of the feminist movement in Arab societies: The queen of identit and utility

The debate between the universal and the local in the approach of the feminist movement in Arab societies: The queen of identit and utility

Heteropessimism and the Pleasure of Saying “No”

Using Lauren Berlant’s keynote at the 2019 Duke Feminist Theory Workshop as a starting point, this article offers a comparative reading of feminism’s “heteropessimistic turn” and the involuntarily celibate (i.e., incel) movement. In doing so, I demonstrate that both groups are saying “no” to certain elements of what Berlant refers to as “the pleasure regimes of sexual normativity.” I focus on the affective function of heteropessimism—what Asa Seresin identifies as its “anesthetic feeling”—arguing that it affectively soothes but politically stultifies the feminist movement. Framing the incel movement in a heteropessimistic light, I dispute the common perception of incels as ‘merely’ misogynistic and argue that their totalizing sexual nihilism indicates a broader hatred of, and disidentification with, the politics of heterosexual desire. Introducing the example of “Black Pill Feminists,” I take the heteropessimistic connections between feminism and incel to their logical conclusion, showing that feminist heteropessimism’s inherent essentialism affectively cements the incongruous ideological positions of feminism to incel’s sexual nihilism. I conclude with an argument for the naturalization of negativity as part of a broader move toward accepting the ambiguities of heterosexual desire and the antagonism(s) that drive it.

Melukis Kembali Penggambaran Citra Gender dalam Media Massa

In Netflix’s 'Ice Cold,' which delves into the murder of Jessica by Mirna, she is often praised and forgiven for her beauty. The documentary even states that the killer is a handsome figure. Women seem to be forced to conform to the image of modern women, who should hold feminist paradigms. Digital television content, as one of the mass media platforms, often portrays women as limited to the role of 'subordinates.' The existence of women is frequently reduced solely to their physical dimensions. It is as if advertisements and television programs would feel empty without the presence of women celebrated as objects. This perspective eventually becomes ingrained in the minds of modern women, largely through the influence of mass media, while commercial demands and the race for the highest ratings are the primary reasons why women continue to be used as complementary objects in various media content.This research employs Roland Barthes' Semiotics to explore how religious education, the male gaze, mass media, and societal views interact in shaping the contemporary perception of the female body. Ironically, the excessive use of patriarchal media has made women feel more liberated to express themselves and actualize their potential in various aspects of life. In this context, elements of religious education play a crucial role, as some Abrahamic religious teachings promote gender hierarchies that can influence society's perception of women and result in gender inequality. The concept of the male gaze is also relevant in this analysis, as it refers to how the male perspective dominates the understanding and representation of women in media, often reducing women to objects of male sexual desire. This research can offer valuable insights into the interconnection of these perspectives and women's potential for increased self-expression within patriarchal-dominated environments.

When street protests meet feminist activism in the A4 Revolution

when street protests meet feminist activism in the A4 Revolution

When digital feminisms collide with nationalism: Theorizing “pink feminism” on Chinese social media

This article examines how Chinese digital feminists synergize with cyber nationalism to fight the patriarchy and strive to legitimize feminist discourse in Chinese digital realms, where online feminists face strict state censorship and nationalistic backlash. We situate pink feminism as a form of Internet-based nonconfrontational feminist activism revolving around nationalism, in which “pink” connotes young female nationalists, and analyze its precarity within an authoritarian state and neoliberal platform economy. We argue that while pink feminism contributes to the plurality of Chinese feminisms by legitimatizing feminist expression within nationalist frameworks and reinterpreting Chinese nationalism from a feminist perspective, it may inevitably reinforce the existing power structures that feminists seek to dismantle. We suggest that Chinese digital feminists should strategically and consciously engage with pink feminism without ceding feminist autonomy and reflexivity. This study enriches our understanding of the entanglement between feminism and nationalism in non-Western contexts.

Towards inclusivity: Dalit women’s representation in contemporary Telugu cinescapes

Cinema acts as a cultural product, a medium of expression and a source of popular entertainment; usually it appears to conscientiously genuflect to upper-caste dictums. Since its inception, Telugu cinema, or Tollywood, the third-largest film industry in India, has produced various caste-based films like Gudavalli Ramabrahmam’s Malapilla (1938), Kasinadhuni Vishwanath’s Kalam Marindhi (1972) and K. Balachander’s Rudraveena (1988), amongst others. In the discourse surrounding caste, the ‘Dalit woman question’ and its representation is either consciously ignored or erased, and thus, it stands enfolded in upper-caste reformist politics. This article analyses the representation of Dalit women in select Telugu films produced at significant sociopolitical junctures of contemporary times. These films mark a significant departure from the stereotypical representation of Dalit women as submissive and portray them as women with voices. Within the larger framework of feminist activism and human rights discourse, we see Dalit women protagonists in these films with an agentic space of their own. In the Indian context, where equality and no discrimination are constitutional rights, the films under discussion, Srikanth Addala’s Narappa (2021) and Sekhar Kammula’s Love Story (2021), are an appropriate intervention to showcase the inclusivity of Dalit women in the larger scheme of Indian feminism. This study employs critical textual and frame analysis to read selected Telugu films as cultural texts with Dalit feminist consciousness embedded within them.

BIRTH OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN INDEPENDENT PAKISTAN

How did the women's movement emerge in Pakistan and what factors created it? Was the women's movement born only from women's organizations? Do only urban women's organizations lead the entire country? Are class differences relevant here? Are knowledge creation and individual and collective consciousness the result of geographical and professional background? We can get answers to these questions only by analyzing theories. The path on which the women's movement in South Asia is moving is the path of integrating gender with development. Women's organizations in South Asian countries are fighting against the elements inimical to women's identity and are strongly opposing the politicization of religion. South Asian women are still trying to restore peace. Along with this, their movement is moving forward with other important issues, such as gender equality which is demanding equality at the level of law, capacity building, participation and governance. The struggle of the South Asian women's movement is visible on every issue. Lack of political power among women, gender inequality, health related issues, need for justice, human rights issues, need for peaceful development etc. are important issues but the path of women's movement in all these is difficult. Lack of state initiatives, feudal and patriarchal social structure and globalization market system and demand for cheap labor are making the path of this struggle more difficult. Many feminists believe that in the context of South Asia, women's movement and feminist movement are two different concepts. While women's movement talks about equal rights in a democratic structure, feminism challenges the legitimacy of a system which is oppressive for women.