Feminist Point Of View Research Articles

VOLUNTEER CARE FOR AN AGING POPULATION: HIGHER QUALITY OF LIFE FOR CARING AND CARE RECEIVING PEOPLE?

Aging is increasingly accompanied by themes of care. While younger and fitter elderly are invited to participate in the context of voluntary activities the older take advantage of this offers. The debate on the organization of care and treatment of an aging population follows two main lines of discussion: One is on the context of social change and political necessities. While the number of aging people is increasing, welfare state security systems do not seem suitable to cope with the associated (expected) challenges. The other main line to these developments is that family support systems are precarious as less and less resources are available for the acquisition of necessary care due to an increasing focus on gainful employment. From a feminist point of view “care” is understood as a social practice that involves the whole of the paid and unpaid care work. It has to be equipped with identifiable structural conditions such as material and time resources, in both the private as well as in public spaces. This paper presents results of a qualitative research with people who are engaged as volunteers for support services for elderly in rural areas. The main question is how volunteer care manifests in and for an aging population and in which kind gender differences continue.

Women, Tradition and Icons: The Gendered Use of the Torah Scrolls and the Bible in Orthodox Jewish and Christian Rituals

This article discusses the relationship between Christian and Jewish Orthodox women with their sacred books (the Christian Bible and the Torah respectively) from a feminist point of view. While recent socio-economic changes have enabled women from an orthodox religious background to become financially independent and ultimately prosperous, from a religious perspective women’s status has not undergone major transformations. Using the cognitive principle of conceptual blending, I will focus on common aspects in Orthodox Judaism and Christianity related to sacred texts as objects, in order to shed light on the religious understanding of prosperity in the twenty-first century, beyond that of empowerment as financial gain or social status. The importance ascribed to authoritative texts both as images of divinity and sacred objects of veneration is a common trait of Orthodox Judaism and Christianity. The gendered perception of the sacred is most prominent in two similar processions. Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday which celebrates the yearly reading cycle of the Torah, is actively celebrated only by men, who are the ones to carry the Torah scrolls. Similarly, the orthodox Good Friday procession involves a cross and the church’s copy of the Scripture together with the Holy Epitaph being carried only by men. The ban on women to carry sacred objects, at least at appointed times, as well as women’s responses in the two communities will be analysed comparatively to establish whether women commonly perceived as prosperous can make steps in order to re-evaluate the theological implications of this restriction.

A Woman Like You? Emma Peel,Xena: Warrior Princess, and the Empowerment of Female Heroes of the Silver Screen

A Woman Like You? Emma Peel,<i>Xena: Warrior Princess</i>, and the Empowerment of Female Heroes of the Silver Screen

Websites for women’s studies students: finding, evaluating, promoting

PurposeThis paper aims to identify and review websites that contribute knowledge about and by women for scholars in women’s studies.Design/methodology/approachThe authors scoured the internet for those sites with timely, authoritative research reports about and by women with a feminist viewpoint.FindingsThere are many gems that provide statistical, theoretical and heuristic insights into the condition of women that may, unless promoted, not be discovered by students who need them.Research limitations/implicationsNew websites will be created and others described herein will evolve.Practical implicationsThe lived experiences of women are largely not covered by standard reference sources, and this requires the librarian to seek out and promote the freely available websites out there that help inform scholars about the experiences of half the world’s population.Originality/valueThere is not one place where the gender and women’s studies librarian can go to find a comprehensive list of the freely available resources that can benefit the feminist scholar, and this paper brings together many of them in one place.

Filosofía feminista y escenarios teatrales recientes: Argentina 2013–2015

This article considers Latin American feminist theatrical production, specifically from Argentina, to answer the question of whether the evolution of feminist philosophical theory has impacted Latin American theatre. To this end, the study examines Mecánicas (2013) by Celina Rosenwurcel and Esquinas en el cielo (2013) by Mariana Mazover. Unlike the productions of the 1980s, which featured the idea of a feminine essence, these recent productions stage the female subject in light of the spaces gained via deconstructionism in recent years, but they also show new difficulties that stem from the expansion of capitalism and its instrumental rationality. This article takes a feminist point of view, following Marxist feminist philosophy and its reflection on the patriarchal capitalist structure as well as theory of intersectionality. It concludes that considerations made through gender insufficiently explore the status of women today and that the analysis of feminist theatre needs to expand its view to include other philosophical categories that allow for more complex, nuanced readings and a better understanding of our times.

“A fine old time”: feminist print journalism in the 1970s

In 1970’s Ireland, a number of feminist activists became the editors of the women’s pages of the national daily newspapers. Their work radically changed women’s access to the role of journalist as well as fundamentally altering the normative perspective applied to news stories. These women introduced “new journalism” to Ireland, writing about issues in the private rather than the public sphere and doing so from an explicitly feminist point of view. These female editors inhabited a workspace and culture that was heavily masculine, but they negotiated bias and sometimes outright discrimination in order to change the gendered nature of Irish print media. In so doing, these women offered a new social understanding of women’s place in news journalism and in Irish society more broadly.

Ellen M. Rogers as a Feminist and Orientalist Travel Writer: A Study of her A Winter in Algeria: 1863-4 (1865)

This article studies the Orientalist and Feminist discourses that underlay Ellen M. Rogers’s A Winter in Algeria: 1863-4 (1865). Her conception of Algeria reproduces the Victorian imperialist attitude toward the Algerian as inferior to the European in order to celebrate British imperial power. Underneath this colonial discourse, the writer proclaims her feminist point of view about empire and juxtaposes feminist attitudes in Victorian Britain with the degraded condition of the Oriental woman. To contribute to Victorian feminist struggle for gender equality, she identifies with the suffering of Muslim Algerian women under male domination and compares their confinement to the harem and their veiling to Victorian “separate spheres” ideology. From this perspective, Rogers presents the profiles of the Orientalist as defined by Edward Said (1978) and the feminist as defined by Antoinette Burton (1994). Said limits his discussion of Orientalism to male writers and travelers who construct imperialist views about the colonial world and its people. However, Burton argues that many Victorian travel writers were women who not only circulated Orientalist ideas but also constructed a feminist discourse. Women writers found in the colonial world ways to cross the boundaries of gender and power in order to criticize male writers who insisted on women’s inferior status. In sum, the major claim made in this article is that Ellen M. Rogers projects a feminist-Orientalist view in her travel account about French Algeria.

The Theme of Silence in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence

This article deals with one of Deshpande’s most significant novels, That Long Silence. In studying the novel from a feminist point of view, an effort has been made to study Deshpande’s psychological insights into the Indian woman’s behaviour. This novel deserves much attention as it is generally considered to be amongst her best and has been singled out among her novels by the Sahitya Academy’s prestigious award in the year 1990.Key words: Discrimination, predicament, dilemma, patriarchy, subjugation.

Ein Superstar der Neueren Finnischen Prosa

Abstract The article is devoted to Sofi Oksanen, one of the most recognizable Finnish authors of the young generation whose literary production has been an unbroken streak of success for the last ten years. It addresses in particular her groundbreaking novel Purge (Puhdistus). In the analysis, the article focuses first and foremost on the aspect of a woman’s corporeality as well as shame and exclusion resulting from sexual abuse. It is one of the central motifs in Osanen’s production. On the example of Aliide the writer depicts, from the feminist point of view, the effects of physical violence towards women used as an element of humiliation and oppression of a conquered nation. The metaphor of a woman’s body as an occupied country gives the novel a universal character and draws attention to the fact that destroying womanhood is a subtle and slow way to the fall of societies. Therefore the deeds of both women are not unambiguously condemned in the novel.

Crocheted Strategies: Women Crafting their Own Communities

In 1987 Virago Press published Women and Craft. Su Richardson was one of the co-editors and contributed an interview with Gaie Davidson called “Crocheted Strategies: A New Audience for Women’s Work.” The book was an outcome of the Feminist Arts News 1981 “Craft” issue which raised a number of questions about the relative status of crafts and arts and the value-level derived from women’s assigned status as “other” than artist. In turn, this emerged out of Feministo, a postal art project instigated by Kate Walker from 1975–1978. Women who trained in art schools in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Su Richardson, Monica Ross, and Walker, communicated with each other in the media of domestic crafts, sewing, knitting, and crochet to represent their lives and work from within the home.Alexandra M. Kokoli, curator of the exhibition of Richardson’s work “Burnt Breakfast” and other Works (2012), wrote in the press release of the same title that:Su Richardson’s homemade objects explore domesticity, femininity and their mutual implication from a distinctly feminist point of view. The exhibition included the iconic crocheted ‘full English’, in which the womanly skill of crochet is used against the grain, to express in a humorous manner a growing dissatisfaction with patriarchal gender roles, and also to challenge the hierarchical division between art and craft.This article explores the relevance of these ideas in the context of the recent resurgence in craft, particularly in textiles and particularly amongst the indie crafters and activists who are able to refer to feminist histories and practices yet not feel bound by them. On the other hand, handcrafting can be mobilized as a statement on domestic roles firmly based within the language of empowerment and enacted through collaborative practice-based work encompassing several disciplines, social media and public engagement. Forty years on there is another kind of news from the crafts community, propelled by social media and a renewed interest in the politics of crafting but not necessarily the crafting of politics.

#nomakeupselfies: the Face of Hashtag Slacktivism

This article interrogates the significance of the selfie in the construction of contemporary female identity through a close analysis of the #nomakeupselfie meme. Drawing on the distinct but conversant theoretical frameworks of cyber-feminisms, post-feminisms and breast cancer culture, it involves both a theoretical investigation and a phenomenological reflection on the selfie trend in question. Mobilizing Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which he used to contextualise the link between technologies of domination and his later postulations on technologies of the self, the article explores the oppositional feminist viewpoints regarding empowerment and agency in online identity construction. It also constitutes an auto-ethnographic response to the phenomenon from my nuanced position as a young, female, selfie-taking, feminist, academic, breast cancer survivor. The analysis of the #nomakeupselfie meme focuses on three central issues: the problematic relationship between breast cancer and beauty; the trivialization, infantilisation and sexualisation of the disease inherent in contemporary breast cancer culture and the self-commodification of the female body as part of a consumer activist transaction.

Do we live in a Marxian world?

This paper proposes a scientific discussion from a Marxian-feminist point of view as a critical response to the European “austerity policies”. Nowadays global inequalities are very relevant, particularly a proletarization process based on an increase in class struggle, growing inequalities, unsustainability and the transnational concentration of power and wealth. The neoliberal approach ignores Marx’s theory and suggests that the Marxian view fails to explain the current economic system. However, I believe this to be a (dishonest) simplification of Marx’s theory (because data is very clear). This misrepresentation has a negative effect on the overall validity and sustainability of several European policies, mainly distribution and migration policies. Consequently, some policy recommendations need to be readdressed, including from a feminist point of view.

The sex of participatory democracy. An analysis of the theoretical approaches and experiences of participatory democracy from a feminist viewpoint

The generalist theory of participatory democracy and the non-essentialist feminist approach to forms of democratization have developed in parallel despite sharing an agreement to work towards more shared forms of managing power. The origin of this disunity lies, partly, in the first theoretical body's tendency to present citizen participation as a tool for democratizing the neutral and universal public space. As a result, both theoretical bodies have parallel points of view regarding the elements that structure women's participation. This article explores, through the qualitative analysis of two experiences of participatory democracy in which the feminist viewpoint has been unequally incorporated (Porto Alegre's participatory budgeting−Porto Alegre PB−and the 15M movement), the relationship between the parallel development of the general proposals of the two theoretical bodies and the elements that restrict the participation of women in the practice of participatory democracy.

Confucianism and Feminism in Korean Context

AbstractThis paper considers a recent claim that Confucianism and feminism are compatible since both are care ethics. I examine some aspects of contemporary care ethics and compare them with Confucian ethics from a feminist viewpoint. I argue that for Confucianism to be made compatible with feminism, the former must be transformed to the extent that it loses its main features.Care ethics can be feminist ethics only when women have been made moral subjects because of their perceived ability to care for others. Caring in a Confucian culture is not as much a feminine value as a male value. I do not find Confucian ethics as care ethics to be particularly liberating for women. For Confucianism to be viable in a contemporary democratic world, it must be supplemented by feminist ethics that take justice and equality as the primary values.

“Re-reading Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale from a Feminist Viewpoint.”

“Re-reading Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale from a Feminist Viewpoint.”

Representaciones del cuerpo femenino por fotógrafas españolas: una mirada feminista

This article aims to disseminate the research conducted for the doctoral thesis “Representations of female body by spanish female photographers: a feminist viewpoint”. The research conducted allowed the gathering of photographs of the female form, taken by female Spanish photographers from 1980 to 2011, analyzing the meaning of the images, iconology and feminism that these classes of images of the female form portray. The photographs represent a personal and truthful image which for them is the female form; from how they feel, how they interpret them and how the female body has ceased to be a “passive object” to be that established as a” subject” in context. They reject the icon of a “female body”, created and exhibited from a patriarchal perspective. They break away from archetypes imposed thereby creating a new representation of what their body symbolizes.

An analysis of the play called importance of being earnest with feminist perspective

Victorian Era is characterized with the power men held in the society. Patriarchal social structure always tended not to let women take positions in the workplace, and social organizations. Victorian England didn’t take the women, their education, attitudes and feelings into consideration. The women were only the docile servers at home for Victorian men. However, some intellectual women and male writers wrote striking novels and plays to attract the public and authorities’ attention to this mere discrimination. Oscar Wilde was one of those who held this issue. He could affect the public opinion with his delightful and satirizing plays. In this study, Oscar Wilde’s well-known play, Importance of Being Ernest was analyzed in terms of feminist point of view. The male and female characters of the play, the patriarchal society, attitudes of characters towards marriage were examined under the light of the approaches of some feminist philosophers, such as Simone de Beavoir, Kate Millet, Susan Bordo and Betty Friedan.

„Természetesen a fiúk hülyék voltak” – kisiskoláskori baráti kapcsolatok fiatal felnőtt nők visszaemlékezéseinek tükrében.

Írásunkban a 90-es évek második felében, Magyarországon iskolájukat kezdő fiúk és lányok kapcsolatának jellemzőit vizsgáljuk, fiatal felnőtt nők visszaemlékezéseinek tükrében. Célunk a rendszerváltás idején született nemzedék tagjainak hosszú távú emlékezetében megőrződött, és a társadalmi változásokkal összefüggésben alakuló barátság-reprezentációk vizsgálata. Ennek során támogatott emlékezéssel, a nagyon hosszú távú memória (VLTM) érzelmileg átfűtött interjúhelyzetben való vizsgálata nyomán nyert adatokból térképezzük fel a két nem egymáshoz fűződő kapcsolatával és a nemek megjelenésével összefüggő emlékeket. Jelen tanulmány egy nagyobb, három generáció visszaemlékezéseit feldolgozó kutatás azon részeredményeit dolgozza fel, melyek a 90-es évekből származnak (F. Lassú és Kolosai, 2010).

Beyond the slammed door

A Doll’s House (1879) is the most read of Ibsen’s plays in West Africa and the most performed. As the basis for the discourse on European emancipatory feminism, the play is presently being employed by selective dramatists in West Africa to contest the misinterpretation of the West African woman by European emancipatory feminists. Nora as a character creates a symbolic canvas on which the “real” African woman as envisaged by Tracie Utoh-Ezeajugh in her adaption titled Nneora: an African doll’s house (2005) is drawn. Owusu Janet, another dramatist, faces the issues from a conservative feminist point of view with her interpretation of the play influenced by her cultural perceptions of the woman.

"Bort med husmanskosten! Skall bli mitt valspråk"

”No more homely fare! will be my motto”. Women, Food and Power in Elin Wägner’s The Norrtull Gang and Penwomen&#x0D; This article analyses the relationship between women, food, and power in two novels by the Swedish feminist writer Elin Wägner (1892–1949): The Norrtull Gang (Norrtullsligan 1908), and Penwomen (Pennskaftet 1910). One important point of departure is Diana McGee’s Writing the Meal: Dinner in Fiction of Early Twentieth-Century Women Writers (2001), in which the author examines how various representations of food reflect the feminist ideas of women writers of the period and their criticism of the traditional roles of women in society.&#x0D; My analysis shows that Elin Wägner’s novels utilise the representation of food to examine and criticise the condition of women in contemporary Swedish society (particularly their roles as housewives and mothers) while at the same time redefining women from a feminist point of view. The critical aspect dominates her debut novel, The Norrtull Gang, where the configuration of food serves as a symbol of the harsh economic conditions under which women live, and the lack of freedom for a new type of working and economically-independent woman. Penwomen, a novel about the struggle for women’s suffrage, sometimes parodies the role of the housewife, including representations of food, in order to destabilise traditional gender norms.