Feminist Critique Research Articles

The Holy Spirit and kenotic loving power

The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of divine power in a way that emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit and simultaneously takes a feminist philosophical critique of power seriously. Inspired by relational theology and the theologies of, among others, Anna Mercedes, Jürgen Moltmann, and Thomas Jay Oord, we propose an understanding of kenosis as divine love-power for the radical Other. We understand divine power not in terms of omnipotence or unlimited might, but as kenotic, vulnerable love for the radical Other. This understanding presupposes the relational aspect of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit resides in us (1 Cor 3:16), and the Spirit does not work alone. The loving and empowering work of the Holy Spirit requires the world’s relational response. Divine power conceptualised in terms of love for the radical Other does not bear negative connotations of patriarchal power-over or power-to. Instead of negating the self, the Spirit’s kenotic loving power makes relationship possible, and thus also the self. We argue that this notion of kenotic power, seen most clearly in the Holy Spirit, suggests divine power worthy of worship also from a Christian feminist standpoint.

A conceptual analysis of gendered energy care work and epistemic injustice through a case study of Zanzibar’s Solar Mamas

Energy and climate transitions bear an inherent risk of replicating historically embedded unjust gendered norms in the current energy regimes. Positioning our work within critical feminist scholarship, our study emphasizes the embedded nature of energy technologies within respective socio-economic, institutional and cultural contexts. We use a combined lens of care and epistemic injustice to examine the case study of Solar Mamas in Barefoot College Zanzibar, highlighting the nuanced interplay of power relations in decentralized energy transitions. This approach helps comprehend and value gendered energy care work as involving skilled labour in everyday life. Our findings illustrate the need for energy transitions research, policy and practice to be deeply informed by lived experiences, diverse practices of care within the energy webs and valuing of multiple voices. We argue that interventions prioritizing care and knowledge in decentralized, locally managed energy provisioning have the potential to disrupt established gender relations.

Confronting complex alliances: Situating Britain’s gender critical politics within the wider transnational anti-gender movement

Britain has recently gained notoriety as a global hotspot for anti-trans politics and ‘gender critical’ feminism. But what is the relationship between British ‘gender critical’ politics and the transnational ‘anti-gender’ movement? Does Britain’s gender critical feminism directly align with the global trends of anti-gender mobilisations, including the latter’s authoritarian and neofascist tendencies? This commentary argues for a context-specific analysis of the British gender-critical movement which is attentive to its divergent political orientations. While some strands of gender-critical politics are openly allied with far-right politics and are explicitly anti-feminist, others include prominent figures from left-wing positions, including left feminists and lesbians. Challenging gender-critical politics in Britain requires a reckoning with its cross-political nature and an analysis of the factors that unite these different strands across left and right.

Doing the messy work: Critical feminism and academic leadership in social work

Doing the messy work: Critical feminism and academic leadership in social work

Terrestrial bodies

As socio-ecological crises deepen, it is increasingly important that analyses of territory consider the other-than-human. Through a detailed engagement with a range of territorial currents, Gonin et al. do just this, introducing the idea of ‘terrestrial territories’ as a way forward, shifting the focus of analysis from the ‘Globe’ to ‘Gaia’. While we welcome the diverse engagement with non-Anglophone understandings of territory, in this commentary, we suggest that decolonial feminist work on Cuerpo-Territorio (body territory) may offer a more grounded, praxis-focused way forward. In particular, we argue that this focus on embodiment over the terrestrial is potentially better placed to address powerful feminist critiques of the Gaia hypothesis.

“They bring the topic [of social justice] but stop there”: Nursing students' perceptions of teaching practices that develop awareness and engagement with social justice

BackgroundPedagogical frameworks grounded in social justice, such as decolonizing and anti-racist educational practices, are essential in nursing programs. While scholars have begun to examine nurse educators' conceptualizations of social justice, there remains a lack of knowledge about student perspectives regarding nurse educators' approaches to incorporating social justice in education. ObjectiveTo understand nursing students' perceptions about educational strategies that develop critical awareness and engagement with social justice and positively influence professional practice. DesignA qualitative study informed by Critical Feminist Pedagogy and guided by Interpretive Description methodology. SettingsA school of nursing in Western Canada. ParticipantsTen undergraduate and graduate nursing students recruited through convenience sampling. MethodsStudents participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews. A set of questions developed to facilitate data analysis allowed the deconstruction of the data to identify broad-based inductive categories. Contrast and comparison methods were also used. Members of the research team provided analytic insights into the categories, and subsequently, all members discussed the findings and developed the interpretive frame. ResultsStudent participants reported that educational strategies promoting awareness and engagement with social justice need to go beyond superficial engagement and awareness of social justice. Researchers' analysis suggests that cohesiveness between awareness and action in social justice is urgently needed within academia to adopt a decolonizing and anti-racist pedagogy in nursing and better prepare students for professional practice. From the data analysis, teaching strategies that enhance cohesiveness include: embracing personal development, creating community spaces and disrupting knowledge and curriculum hierarchies. ConclusionsUnderstanding students' perceptions and incorporating their suggestions is critical to integrating socially just teaching practices that embrace a learner-centred pedagogy. Our findings offer suggestions for teaching strategies that foster critical awareness and engagement with social justice. Combined, these contribute to our understanding of signature pedagogies in nursing with the intention of increasing the adoption of anti-racist and decolonizing approaches.

The beginning of despair: aggressive Retsuko and the Sanrioization of women’s ‘transgressive rage’

In 2016, Sanrio debuted a series of shorts featuring Retsuko, a cute lesser panda with a penchant for bursts of death-metal infused violent rage. The shorts, eventually transformed into a full show on Netflix, were a comedic look at Retsuko’s anger at unfair treatment in the Japanese workplace, casting a critical eye on issues of sexism, harassment, and overwork. But while Retsuko has been explicitly positioned as counter cultural, what does it mean to be transgressive and Sanrio? This paper analyzes this question from a cross-disciplinary perspective, drawing on critical feminist studies, rage studies, media studies, and sociolinguistics. Approaching the framing, content, and speech of Retsuko throughout her media appearances, we argue that while Retsuko is certainly critical of contemporary Japan, her transgression is ultimately limited, with any potential paths to freedom or rebellion hampered by a corporate system that reabsorbs transgressive behavior and sells it back to customers, closing off the potential to imagine new ways of being.

The Legacy of Midwifery and the Women’s Health Movement in Contemporary Discourses of Patient Choice and Empowerment

This commentary traces the roots of the notion of patient empowerment and patient-centred care to the radical beginnings of the women’s health movement and the feminist critiques of medicalized childbirth. I pay particular attention to the emergence of the concept of informed choice in community midwifery as one of the women’s health movement’s key strategies to combine medical science with women’s own experience to effect the empowerment of women in health care. I also reflect on the limitations of the notions of empowerment and choice as they have been taken up by mainstream health institutions and the health care marketplace-often without acknowledging the contributions of midwifery and the women’s health movement-noting the diminished promise and potentially problematic effects of taking these notions out of their political contexts. This article has been peer reviewed.

Emotional labour while working with families: Potential affordances for supporting early childhood educators’ wellbeing

Partnering with families is an explicit regulatory and role requirement for early childhood educators, yet the emotional labour involved is implicit and relatively unacknowledged. While research has found that complex work demands jeopardise educator wellbeing – resulting in unprecedented turnover and attrition in Australia and internationally – little research has investigated emotional labour and associated educator wellbeing in relation to partnering with families. This article argues that the limited research on educators’ emotional labour with families and its ensuing invisibility may pertain to both its positioning within social constructivist and interpretivist paradigms that render such work as naturally inherent and to conceptualisations of emotional labour theory that entrench this work in maternalistic discourses. The article positions emotional labour theory within a critical feminist lens and as a worthwhile line of inquiry to extend this body of research and disrupt maternalistic discourses that diminish educators’ skilful labour. The potential affordances pertaining to the illumination of this work as skilful for early childhood workforce policy are considered.

From the Womb to the Cosmos: A Feminist Investigation into Porphyry's Interpretation of the Cave of the Nymphs

Abstract Porphyry wrote an interpretation of a passage from the Odyssey under the title On the Cave of the Nymphs; this passage talks about a cave sacred to the water nymphs, which has two gates. Inside the cave, there are stone amphoras where bees store honey; stone looms where sea-purple clothes are woven, and a spring from where water flows ceaselessly. Porphyry interpreted this cave as a symbol of the cosmos; however, caves represent the womb of a goddess in the matriarchal tradition. In this paper, I aim to show how patriarchal transition takes place in Porphyry's interpretation of seeing caves as a symbol of the cosmos. From a philosophical perspective, I will also show that Porphyry attributes to the noetic principle a qualification which puts matter into form, while he sees matter as the source of ignorance, an attitude that is compatible to the feminist critique of reason in which rationality is associated with masculinity rather than femininity.

Travel for women rights: social movements and the construction of travel as activism in social media

ABSTRACT Globalized social movements often require travel, but travel as a symbolic form of transnational activism has only been examined in certain instances. This paper employs the notion of political travel and, through a qualitative content analysis of social media posts during the 2018 pro-choice Irish referendum campaign, it shows how travel can be approached as a form of activism and resistance from a critical feminist angle in the context of a global campaign mediated by social media. Inspired by assemblage theory [De Landa, M. (2016). Assemblage theory. Edinburgh University Press.], our findings show how different elements; people, spaces, objects are assembled to construct the framing and narrative of a social movement that fights for women rights. The individual accounts of travel experiences in social media contributed to the overall ‘aestheticization’ of the social movement. Also, the study offered insights into the meanings that, predominantly female, travellers, assign to their political travel, which are in turn shaped by personal and historical concerns.

Queer temporalities and the life course: Trans aging in Torrey Peters' Detransition, Baby (2021)

Torrey Peters' debut novel Detransition, Baby from 2021, a Women's Prize for Fiction nominee, problematizes gender norms by telling the story of three main characters: Reese, a trans woman, Ames, who de-transitioned to live as a man again, and Katrina, a Chinese and Jewish cis woman who is also Ames' lover and boss. Ames and Katrina are expecting a child and are testing the possibilities of having a non-conventional family together with Reese. Parenthood is, thus, the central theme of the novel which structures also the sections of book into the time before the conception and the weeks after it. By doing so, the temporal framework of the novel queers the linearity of heteronormative life courses on the form as well as the content level. Therefore, the interplay of form and content invites to critically investigate how the concept of trans time that challenges linearity and normative conformity (Halberstam, 2005) may provide useful insights into trans aging and the life course through this literary representation. Following, contemporary feminist theorists' commitments to negotiate what makes “life more livable for those whose gender presentation, identity, or bodily experience have been judged abnormal, nonexistent, or impossible” (Karhu, 2022, 304–305), this paper aims at carrying out a critical feminist literary analysis of trans aging, queer life courses and the thereof related gendered norms in Peters' novel. By relying predominantly on feminist poststructuralist theories (Butler 2004) and cultural aging studies (Maierhofer, 2019), it is the aim to challenge normativity and limited social norms through this critical literary reading.

Masking the Inner-Killjoy: A Critical Feminist Perspective on Police Research

Masking the Inner-Killjoy: A Critical Feminist Perspective on Police Research

Artificial intelligence and assisted reproductive technology: Applying a reproductive justice lens

In recent years, health-data-driven artificial intelligence and machine learning applications have been introduced to many areas of medicine. In the field of assisted reproduction, artificial intelligence and machine learning applications and related technologies have been hailed as (potentially) significant and ground-breaking, not least because they promise standardisation and automation in in-vitro fertilisation clinics – a precondition for scaling up and branching out in the fertility bioindustry. Artificial intelligence data-driven algorithms promise time- and cost-effective selection of ‘high-quality’ reproductive cells and successful personalised treatments. In this essay, we aim to critically discuss artificial intelligence as a technological clinical practice, which is currently moving from bench to bedside internationally. Through an analytic framework of reproductive justice, we propose that introducing artificial intelligence into this already stratified context threatens to black-box health disparities and to generate what we refer to as ‘hyper-stratifications’ of reproduction in the context of rising health and social disparities in the European context. As feminist, social science and bioethics scholars, we are all too aware of how reproductive technologies reinforce normativities rather than unravel them. We cannot presume that artificial intelligence is an ethical technological agent or user of health data but, instead, need to keep a critical eye on the moral ambivalence of emerging and evolving artificial intelligence-assisted reproduction technologies practices and their gendered consequences. Given the current hype around artificial intelligence, but also with concerns around the fast development and deployment of artificial intelligence generally and in artificial intelligence-assisted reproduction technologies particularly in mind, there is an urgent need to engage in critical feminist discussion of such developments.

Reaction to the Death of the Girlboss: Critical Feminist Epistemology and Implications for HRD

Girlboss is an archetype made popular in the 2010s that defined women’s success in terms of their individual determination and hard work. In their critique “The Death of the Girlboss: Critical Feminist Epistemology and Implications for HRD,” the authors problematize the girlboss archetype’s noting it’s individualistic nature and how it fails to acknowledge and account for the systemic barriers that all women continue to face at work. This reaction paper shares an alternative perspective on the girlboss archetype by expanding the definition of gender and women, discussing the need for collective acknowledgment of women’s successes, a proposing an evolution for girlboss.

AN ANALYSIS OF FEMINIST CRITICISM AND DESCRIPTION OF THE PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN THE MULTI-LEVEL AND TRADITIONAL SOCIETY IN THE SELECTED WORK A ROSE FOR EMILY BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

This paper delves into the realm of feminist criticism and explores the portrayal of women in traditional society through a close examination of William Faulkner's renowned short story, "A Rose for Emily." The study aims to shed light on the patriarchal constructs that shaped women's roles and identities during the time the story was set. Drawing upon feminist literary theory, the research analyzes the ways in which Faulkner depicts the female character in "A Rose for Emily." Emily's life becomes a symbol of the oppression and control exerted on women in the patriarchal society depicted in the story. Using textual evidence and critical analysis, the paper explores the themes of oppression, control, and the limited agency granted to women in the traditional Southern society. Furthermore, the research examines the impact of societal norms on the character's choices, relationships, and sense of self. Through a comprehensive examination of the selected work, this research aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on feminist criticism and the portrayal of women in traditional societies. By delving into the complexities of gender dynamics and societal expectations, it seeks to foster a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by women in patriarchal societies and the ways in which literature reflects and perpetuates these structures.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0787/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Worry-YING and Worry-YANG: A Critical Feminist Study with Women Who Worry

Gender is a critical determinant of mental health and well-being. Women are at greater risk of mental illness due to gender-based violence, economic disadvantage, and low social status. Women experience higher levels of acute and chronic stress and are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorder is a serious public health problem affecting 1:3 people worldwide, and according to WHO's International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), a key symptom of anxiety is excessive worry. Few studies, however, have explored worry as a precursor to anxiety, and fewer have explored worry in relation to gender. This critical feminist study aimed to explore this phenomenon and identify the impact of worry on women and their mental health and well-being. Methods: Forty-five women living in Melbourne, Australia, participated in this qualitative study. They attended a 1-h semi-structured interview with the researcher to define and discuss worry and identify any impact or effect worry or worrying has had on their life as women. Results: The findings revealed that women worry about children, money, work, study, and violence against women. Conclusions: This study builds on the existing knowledge of the mental health and well-being of women, supports early intervention strategies to prevent anxiety disorder and long-term health risks; and meets the core objectives of the National Women’s Health Strategy 2020-2030 to ‘Improve the health and wellbeing of all women and girls in Australia’.

“Constructed Women”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908 - 1986), as the pioneer and founder of feminist literary criticism, her feminist thoughts and Literary theory have had a profound impact on the development of women's movement and feminist literary theory around the world. Beauvoir is “one of the most important women of the 20th century.” His book The Second Sex covers the cultural content of philosophy, history, literature, biology, ancient myths and customs, and discusses the actual women’s situation, status and rights in the historical evolution from Primitive society to modern society. In the book, linguistic theories and methods are applied to define and differentiate gender concepts, and a detailed study is conducted on the shaping and influence of daily life, religion, and taboo language on women’s psychology and consciousness. Exploring the relationship between gender and culture is an important dimension that reflects a conscious awareness of language and culture. Beauvoir’s language research has provided important theoretical inspiration for the development of feminism, especially postmodern feminist criticism, and has a transitional significance that connects the past and the future. This article takes The Second Sex as the research text and conducts a feminist analysis of Beauvoir’s linguistic theory from three aspects: The first part elaborates on feminism by analyzing Beauvoir’s application of linguistic methods and research on multiple linguistic issues, criticizing the traditional patriarchal cultural tradition. The second part compares Woolf’s feminist language views and introduces the different focuses of language research between the two. The third part elaborates on the impact of Beauvoir’s language research on feminist criticism and postmodern feminism.

Zainab BatulNaqvi, Polygamy, Policy and Postcolonialism in English Marriage Law; A Critical Feminist Analysis, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2023, 239 pp, hb £85.00

Zainab BatulNaqvi, Polygamy, Policy and Postcolonialism in English Marriage Law; A Critical Feminist Analysis, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2023, 239 pp, hb £85.00

Introduction: Feminist media production and beyond

This special issue features five articles written by a group of established and emerging researchers, who carefully examined the challenges and opportunities for women's participation in media production across platforms and nations. Overall, the case studies in this special issue extend and broaden current conversations about gendered media-making practices by emphasizing an intersectional, transnational, and critical feminist perspective on identity, subjectivity, embodiment, and labour. Further, these studies highlight both structural barriers that women face in the global media industries as well as emergent resistant and interventionist tactics. Taken together, they demonstrate the value of local, situated analyses and expose the shared patriarchal repressions as well as opportunities of development for feminist media production within a transnational context.