Feminist Reform Research Articles

Exposing a Motherhood Penalty in Sport: A Feminist Narrative Inquiry of Media Stories of Canadian Athlete Mothers’ Journeys to the 2020 Tokyo Games

Coinciding with athlete mothers’ stories gaining media visibility, sport media researchers are studying media discourses to learn more about socially constructed motherhood and sport. The present study extends media research on elite athlete mothers, by using feminist narrative inquiry to interrogate discrimination meanings in sport. North American sport media stories were collected on Canadian athletes’ (i.e., boxer Mandy Bujold, basketball player Kim Gaucher) journeys to the 2020 Tokyo Games after being discriminated against due to their motherhood status. Thematic narrative analysis of 103 stories identified three narrative motifs (i.e., recurring concepts) in stories linked to discrimination meanings: last shots, forced to choose, and more than us. The first two motifs are discussed in relation to a motherhood penalty narrative linked to sexism and discrimination. The more than us motif is discussed in relation to the resolution to compete for both athletes, linked to maternal activism and social change. All three motifs exposed and challenged maternal discrimination in sport, using ‘feminist consciousness’ linked to a neoliberal feminist status quo. These findings show the pedagogical potential of media stories for athlete maternity rights awareness and structural change, while highlighting a need for intersectional feminist reform regarding athlete parents and post-pandemic recovery.

Gender Concepts In The Novels of Nazar Sajjad In The Context Of Feminist Reform

Thousands of years ago, system “Madr sari” system was prevalent. Women used to live independent life. Modern agricultural system introduced “Padar.shahi” system which changed the whole situation and women became subjugated and negligible, which placed them in defiance of the historical powder and dominance under the British Rule women were granted some of basic rights giving rise to their recognition in the society. The authors including female writers presented women as a subject of their novels. One of the female writers of that era is Nazar Sajjad Haider who presented the concept of modern and independent women with bravely.She is the mother of Qrat u lain Haider. She emphasized over the issues such as modern and higher education for the women, important of women consent at the time of marriage and men’ s right of second marriage, in her writings . This research work will analyze the social position of women under the novels of Nazar Sajjad Haider. She was practically a feminist who fought against the old fashioned and feudal prevalent traditions of her time.

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970 as American Cinema by Maya Montañez Smuckler

Reviewed by: Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970 as American Cinema by Maya Montañez Smuckler Alicia Kozma Maya Montañez Smuckler, Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970 as American Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019. In 2015, Hollywood studios made headlines as the as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) accepted a request made by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California to investigate systemic discrimination in the hiring of women film directors. While mainstream media reported the inquiry as a potential watershed moment for gendered labor equality in the industry, little was made of the fact that the EEOC had been down this road with Hollywood before. Thankfully, Maya Montañez Smuckler's Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970as American Cinema painstakingly narrates the lesser-known history of the intersection between employment oversight, Hollywood guilds, studios, and the fight for women's equal participation in filmmaking. Combining oral history, interviews, and in-depth archival research focused on internal guild publications, press coverage, legal records, and trades, Montañez Smuckler reconstructs the advocacy efforts of three professional unions—the Directors Guild of American (DGA), the Screen Actors Guild of America (SAG) and the Writers Guild of American (WGA)—from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, as the rise of "Women's Committees" within each union fought in various ways against the hiring discrimination of women film workers. These efforts intersected with the federal efforts to diversify the Hollywood labor pool, beginning with a late 1960s EEOC hearing on job discrimination and ending with a devastating mid-1980s ruling that stymied legal recourse for discriminated workers. Intertwined with this history, Liberating Women recounts the rise of women filmmakers in Hollywood during this time of heady time of social, cultural, and political change. The book's prologue traces the impact of the New American Cinema movement of the 1950s and 1960s in New York City as a critical creative space for the women directors like Shirley Clarke and Juleen Compton, precursors to the women who would spur on more than a decade of creativity and advocacy in Hollywood. Chapter 1 notes the first attempts of feminist reform as the second wave feminist movement bisected the growing number of women directors vocal about their lack of opportunities in Hollywood. The EEOC makes its first foray into Hollywood in 1969, requiring the industry set measurable benchmarks for hiring minority workers; women film workers were not included in this plan because the EEOC did not consider them a large enough pool of workers to merit protections. In what would become a recurring standard, the EEOC left it up to the studios to enforce hiring benchmarks and protections in good faith. jThey did not live up to their requirements, and with the exclusion of women workers from agreement, it was left to guild women to demand their own seats at the table. Chapters 2 and 3 integrate institutional efforts at gendered labor equality while focusing on the individual women working within and without the Hollywood system as writers, producers, and directors. For many of these women, Liberating Hollywood is the first substantial academic treatment of their work. While Montañez Smuckler does not claim that these women worked in communication with one another, they do represent a cadre of film laborers fighting to produce work in a system that was openly hostile to their inclusion. Many of these women may have [End Page 67] not been professional colleagues, but they exist in camaraderie with one another. While both chapters provided professional biographies and overarching critical filmic and industrial analysis, Chapter 2 chronicles women directors through their "cultures of production" (77) and Chapter 3 through the rise of the "new women's film" (159). Chapter 2, then, traces the studio, art house, and/or exploitation work of Elaine May, Barbara Loden, Karen Arthur, Joan Micklin Silver, Penny Allen, Stephanie Rothman, Beverly and Fred Sebastian, and Barbara Peeters. Chapter 3 includes Joan Darling, Jane Wagner, Joan Tewkesbury, Joan Rivers, and Claudia Weill. While these two chapters primarily concentrate on individual filmmakers, Liberating Hollywood does not lose the thread of its larger spotlight on...

The National Women’s Alliance in interwar Yugoslavia: between feminist reform and institutional social politics

ABSTRACT This article explores the history of the International Council of Women (ICW) affiliate, the National Women’s Alliance (NWA) in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia during the interwar period, by placing it in the broader history of humanitarianism, philanthropy and social work. In particular, it addresses the question how the NWA contributed to the interwar Yugoslav state from the perspective of social work, which is defined here as reform designed to remedy social inequalities and as collective action to develop the state’s duty of care towards those who cannot provide for themselves. By examining some aspects of the relationship between women’s charitable and feminist associations on the one hand, and the (emerging welfare) state on the other, this article seeks to open new questions regarding forms of cooperation between the NWA and the Yugoslav state, and thus shed light on the history of social policy and social work in interwar Yugoslavia.

Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema by Montañez Maya Smuckler

Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema by Montañez Maya Smuckler

From Afghan Pan-Islamism to Turkish Feminism

From Afghan Pan-Islamism to Turkish Feminism

Prospects and challenges of gender neutralization in Russian

Feminist linguistic activism has gained prominence among Western feminists as a way to eliminate sexism in language and everyday life. In Russian, gender specification (known as feminitivy) represents the mainstream approach practiced by grassroots feminist reformers. However, alternative approaches aimed at gender neutralization proliferate. The paper examines the prospects and challenges of gender neutralization both in writing and oral speech. Results of a survey documenting attitudes of Russian-speaking feminist and LGBTQI communities to language reform attempts are presented, with a special focus on comparison between gender specification and gender neutralization.

Feminism and Its Discontents: Punishing Sexual Violence in India

Following the infamous gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi in 2012, India introduced a host of legislative reforms, including harsh punishments for sexual offences. Indian feminist groups, though invested in some of these reforms, have been critical of the carceral approach, but other than denouncing the death penalty, they have largely abstained from conversations around appropriate punishments for sexual crimes. Mapping the responses of feminist groups to the J. S. Verma Committee, this article underscores inconsistencies between the positions on defining sexual offences on the one hand and suggesting appropriate punishments on the other. It argues that the absence of engagement around complex issues of criminal law and sentencing not only left feminists divided on the outcome in Mahmood Farooqui’s case but also revealed unintended consequences of the newly introduced law on rape. The article concludes by questioning the use of criminal law as a site for feminist reform.

Tort Law and Feminism, forthcoming in Oxford Handbook on Feminism and the Law in the U.S. (Deborah L. Brake, Martha Chamallas & Verna Williams, eds) (forthcoming 2021)

Tort law has not been a sympathetic audience for feminist legal scholars. Despite decades of compelling feminist advocacy and scholarship, tort law has largely resisted attempts to orient it towards pursuing goals of social justice or equality. Nevertheless, some feminist redirection has been achieved, mostly through statutory intervention, thus laying the groundwork for further development. This chapter imagines what tort law might look like if it more fully embraced feminist reforms. Focusing on four foundational concepts in tort law – duty, third-party liability, harm, and damages – this chapter uses the tools, insights, and arguments of modern feminist tort scholarship to envision the doctrinal landscape of a tort law rooted in gender justice and social equality. Noting the places where feminist paths have already been forged, this chapter explores how reconceptualizing the duty of care, expanding third-party liability, recognizing a broader range of intimate and harassment-based harms, and eliminating gender and racial bias from damage awards could transform tort from an instrument that perpetuates existing social inequalities into a mechanism of social justice offering recompense and remedy to all who are wrongfully injured.

Subversive acts and everyday midwifery: Feminism in content and context

BackgroundMidwives are often at the forefront of political campaigns for women's empowerment, overtly advocating for women's rights and reproductive justice. However, midwives can also be found engaging in inadvertent activism on a daily basis within routine care. When casting a feminist lens over both the content and context of midwifery practice in Australia, subversive acts and opportunities for feminist reform can be found. AimTo interrogate the significance of feminism in midwifery practice, identifying feminist successes and further opportunities for implementation including: analysis of the Midwifery Standards for Practice; the primary tenets of woman-centred care; the content versus context of midwifery in Australia; and feminist opportunities for enhanced practice. This paper will discuss the importance of feminism in midwifery practice and its significance in informing optimal midwifery care. DiscussionIncorporating women's voice and respecting women's bodies and agency in the delivery of care is a fundamental component of midwifery practice. However, while the content of midwifery practice is innately feminist in its emphasis on woman-centred care, it will be argued that the context of birthing in Australia is not. The resultant effect is the emergence of victim blaming in maternity care and the construction of an archetypal ‘good birthing woman’. Implications and recommendationsMoving away from the myth of the ‘good birthing woman’ and the act of victim blaming, midwifery could instead direct its focus towards challenging the rigid systems and structures within which midwives implement care. By further embracing feminist principles midwives will ensure a truly woman-centred future.

The Last of the Long Takes: Feminism, Sexual Harassment, and the Action of Change

The surging activism of #MeToo has expanded discussion of the revival of feminism and the role of digital activism, and raised questions about potential for lasting change. This is approached by comparing the featured politics of naming in two eras of feminism: the naming of alleged harassers in #MeToo which originated with the claims against Harvey Weinstein by Hollywood identities in 2017; and the naming of sexual harassment as a workplace issue by feminist activists in the 1970s. Anita Hill’s testimony to the US Senate against Clarence Thomas in 1991 is a bridging episode between the eras to which Lauren Berlant responded with her theory of Diva Citizenship and her argument that change depends on the action of the body politic in response to the Diva Citizen. I argue that the historical naming of sexual harassment was a crucial first stage in any lasting change.

Rape adjudication in India in the aftermath of Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013: findings from trial courts of Delhi

ABSTRACT This paper asesses the impact of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013 (CLA-2013) on rape adjudication, by examining 1635 rape judgments from trial courts of Delhi pronounced between 2013 and 2018. Of these, 726 cases were adjudicated under the old law, of which 16.11% resulted in convictions and 909 cases were adjudicated under the CLA-2013, of which 5.72% resulted in convictions. Analysing this data, the paper argues that absence of engagement with criminal justice literature linking mandatory minimum punishments with higher acquittal rates, led to unintended consequences, like reduced convictions under the CLA-2013. The paper also finds similar patterns between nature of rapes and reasons for acquittal under both laws, highlighting that mere legal reform, unaccompanied by governance and social reform, does not yield far-reaching results. The paper concludes by questioning the use of criminal law as a site for feminist reform.

The Colonial–Religious Institutional Contract: Muslim Women Activists in Israel

Abstract This study examines the growth of a progressive religious Muslim activism among Palestinian women in Israel and the challenges it poses to the religious patriarchy and colonial power structures. Based on semistructured interviews with a religious feminist organization’s activists, the study revealed that feminist Islamic activism addresses an alliance between state officials and patriarchal–religious establishment gatekeepers that interlock to block Muslim feminist reform. Unlike other Muslim activists in former settler colonial states where state and religion are separate and unlike progressive Muslim women in Muslim states who struggle to escape the religious–patriarchal trap, in Israel, these activists face a religious–colonial–patriarchal trap.

Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema

Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema

Anti-Carceral Feminism: The Contradictions of Progress and the Possibilities of Counter-Hegemonic Struggle

History reveals that the pathway toward carceral feminism was fraught with contradictions. Feminist reform strategies that appeared progressive devolved into mandates contributing to the policies of mass incarceration; frameworks meant to disavow racist myths of violence inherent to communities of color fueled color-blind narratives that cloaked white, middle-class-defined social movement priorities; safety strategies protecting survivors of violence entrapped them into set options violating the right to self-determination. Today’s account of carceral feminism reveals well-intentioned choices leading to often ill-fated outcomes. As the critique of carceral feminism seeps into the discourse of the feminist anti-violence movement, a shift toward new values, policies, and practices holds the possibility of radical new directions. However, there is no reason to assume that this new pathway will be so straightforward. This article centers the dynamic of contradiction to synthesize insights of post-Marxist thought in application to contemporary anti-carceral feminist trends represented by transformative justice options. It also reflects on the recent ascendance of restorative justice and a renewed potential for carceral co-optation. The aim is to illuminate troubled areas of revision and radical alternatives and better navigate inevitable ethical and pragmatic tensions that may define future social movement trajectories.

Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870–1967 by Joan Marie Johnson

Reviewed by: Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870–1967 by Joan Marie Johnson Mary Ann Dzuback (bio) Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870–1967. By Joan Marie Johnson. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 303. $39.95 cloth $29.99 e-book) Throughout the nineteenth century, women raised money for temperance campaigns, suffrage conventions, and aid for the poor, the mentally ill, and orphans. Much of this funding came from men or from women's own carefully guarded private resources. But women more often contributed time, organizational skills, and network contacts, because, without direct access themselves over a long period of time to the money economy and capital accumulation based on their [End Page 425] own labors, women relied on men for the bulk of their livelihood. Joan Marie Johnson challenges our understanding of women supporting these kinds of reform activities with her study of the centrality of women's direct funding for the suffrage movement and the organizations that drove it; higher education institutions as central loci for women's consciousness raising and intellectual development in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth century; and reproductive control, particularly contraceptives, through the twentieth century. Funding Feminism explores the ways that women-driven philanthropy provided donors and their beneficiaries power in shaping suffrage, educational, and reproductive reform. Johnson argues that this funding was crucial to the success of feminism and feminist reform efforts—it "radically" transformed possibilities for women (p. 6). The goal from the 1870s was to "increase women's opportunities and promote [gender] equality" (p. 7), initially through enhancing political and educational gains and then enabling women some control over reproduction. Yet the ways these various donors exercised their own funding power created tensions between donors and recipients regarding agenda, process, and strategy in the various organizations. Funding Feminism explores the donors, the sources of their wealth, and how their approaches to suffrage campaigns differed from earlier nineteenth-century philanthropic endeavors. Johnson examines how donors' individual histories and frustration with lack of power motivated them to join networks with suffrage leaders to finance meetings, publicity, and infrastructure to promote women's suffrage, which resulted in greater centralization of suffrage organizations. Johnson analyzes feminists' attempts to organize working women, through the Women's Trade Union League, for example, and how donors' agendas shifted the organizations from the ground-up, democratic processes that had existed before they intervened. Johnson draws on both primary and secondary research to describe colleges women endowed with their wealth, with the explicit purpose of preparing women to become both highly educated and self-supporting, as well as the challenges they encountered from the men who tried to redirect [End Page 426] their donations. Johnson explores the motivations behind and specific goals of such founders as Sophia Smith (Smith College), Ellen Scripps (Scripps College), Josephine Newcomb (Newcomb College at Tulane), Phoebe Apperson Hearst (co-education at the University of California–Berkeley), Mary Garrett (the Johns Hopkins Medical School and Bryn Mawr College) with her partner M. Carey Thomas. Lastly, and perhaps the most interesting, Johnson examines the friendship and alliance between Margaret Sanger and donor Katherine McCormick, who provided organizational strategies and funding for what became Planned Parenthood and the contraceptive pill. A biologist trained at MIT, McCormick focused her money and energy on developing the Pill in the 1950s and 1960s, from financing the laboratory work and experimentation to the campaign for legalization and distribution through a variety of women's clinics and eventually Planned Parenthood. Johnson's argument is quite persuasive: that wealthy donors' feminist commitments and large donations, coupled with smaller donations by women at the grassroots level, were critical to attaining women's suffrage, expanded educational opportunities, and reproductive control. She teases out how the tensions between wealthy donors and grassroots organizers made these reforms possible and inhibited their inclusiveness. Her signal contribution is in examining so closely and thoroughly how philanthropy helped initiate and sustain these campaigns for equality, rights, and justice for women. Moreover, Johnson articulates how their impacts crossed boundaries of race, class, ethnicity, and education. The reforms philanthropists financed from the 1870s were critical, when coupled with less...

Feminisms and the Qur’anic Text

Are Feminism and Islam mutually exclusive terms? Actually, they are not. As the process of modernization spreads around the world, Muslim women have asked various unpopular questions concerning the interaction between Islam and Feminism. The result has been the construction of various feminist traditions within Islam. This essay seeks to examine the root causes behind various Islamic feminist reformers. The dawn of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of an epoch of worldwide social change that has continued to challenge the religious and social basis of all societies to this day. European colonial powers formed the political and economic ideological framework that was to encroach upon the Islamic world. The gradual emergence of the global economy and the political ascendancy of the West dictated a global trend that was not easy for non-Western nations to avoid. These changes have invariably been multidimensional in nature; from the emergence of territorial states in their current format to educational reforms. One of the areas to undergo a radical transformation is relation between the sexes, as women searched for their identity and place in the new world.

Feminism on the frontier: the history of abortion law reform in 1973 in the Northern Territory, Australia

ABSTRACTIn 1973, the Northern Territory (NT) criminal law relating to abortion was reformed. The NT was one of only two Australian jurisdictions where the 1970s liberalisation of abortion was enabled by legislative reform. Unlike the 1969 South Australian reform, the NT bill was sponsored by a female, and feminist, parliamentarian, Dawn Lawrie, assisted by a small group of supporters. This article recovers the narrative of this pioneering reform achieved in a place dominated by white men. It argues that this achievement was enabled by the NT’s individualistic culture, its history of white women’s activism and the mood for progressive change in 1970s Australia. It contextualises the reform by keeping the position of Indigenous women, including the public opposition of some to abortion reform, clearly in view, thus keeping race at the centre of the analysis of liberal feminist reforms and of white feminism in the NT in the early 1970s.

The administration of feminism in education: revisiting and remembering narratives of gender equity and identity

ABSTRACTThis article examines challenges in writing histories of feminist reforms in schooling and educational administration. The focus is gender equity reforms in Australian schools since the 1970s, looking at how those earlier interventions are now remembered, represented and forgotten, in policy memory and collective narratives. Such feminist endeavours were part of the policy landscape and the administration of schools during the 1970s and 80s. I argue that feminist agendas can also be examined as themselves sites for managing the conduct of teachers and students and for regulating new forms of identity and social relations. These paradoxical aspects of feminist reform are analysed through a Foucauldian lens. The discussion identifies contextual themes in JEAH before considering debates within gender and feminist history. A revisiting mood has initiated a stocktake of the stories told not only about feminism but also the accounts feminism gives of itself. Extending this, I propose that critical attention to memory and the movement of received and revised historical narratives is vital for analysing the legacies of feminist reforms and how they might be (re)animated in the present. More broadly, it is suggested that attention to policy memory offers fruitful directions for historical studies of educational administration.