Feminist Research Articles

Understanding quan in feminist activism and queer articulations: Digital media and rights practices in China

Understanding <i>quan</i> in feminist activism and queer articulations: Digital media and rights practices in China

Justice, rights-politics, and the coloniality of knowledge production: critical lessons from Rojava and the Jineolojî movement towards liberating life

ABSTRACT Since 2012 a revolution has been taking place in Northeastern Syria (Rojava). This project in ‘democratic autonomy’, has taken place in the anomic gap left by the absence of a state, and has been driven in large part by feminist activists. These feminist activists have played a pioneering role in re-imagining a moral and political society, through Jineolojî or ‘women's science’. Jineolojî now extends beyond Rojava, constituting a vibrant and powerful transnational or diasporic public sphere, working to develop and promote new ideas about justice, morality, and politics from a situated and embodied gendered perspective. Drawing on interview data and published materials, this article examines the constitution of Jineolojî, as well as the practices of research and self-fashioning activists undertake in the cultivation of new models for feminist power and legality. What emerges from these onto-epistemic practices of revolution and the entanglement of ways of being, knowledge and the law, is the production of new modes of desire, subjectivity, and rights. It argues that the practice of Jineolojî offers critical lessons for cosmological and political justice rooted in the local and a vernacular practice of rights.

Amina Al-Saʿid: a liberal femocrat under state feminism

ABSTRACT This article discusses the public life of the Egyptian journalist and feminist Amina al-Saʿid (1914–1995), who has hardly received any scholarly attention. On the one hand, it examines her shortcomings as a feminist, and on the other hand, it investigates the contribution of her journalistic work to Egyptian feminism in the decades following the 1952 revolution. During this period, under an authoritarian and centralist regime that promoted state feminism but closed women’s organizations, women such as al-Saʿid allegedly turned into femocrats who preferred their government-supported positions over solidarity with women of other classes and ideological beliefs. By examining the femocrat as an analytical category, this article undermines the perspective of femocrats in authoritarian centralist rule as lacking any agency—particularly feminist agency—and argues instead that al-Saʿid’s lack of explicit political solidarity with feminist activists whom the government silenced were a fruit of her liberal pre-revolutionary upbringing rather than merely being a byproduct of her alliance with the Nasser regime. Importantly, it argues that she continued to make a significant contribution to maintaining a feminist political presence and mediating the implications of state reforms for the reconstruction of gender identity and relations.

Areas for action to promote positive forms of masculinities in preventing violence against women: a concept mapping study in Spain

BackgroundViolence against women (VAW) perpetrated by men is a public health problem of significant magnitude that negatively affects the whole society. Unequal gender relations produce differentiated positions in the social structure; gender roles that position men and women differently are defined and which are at the root of VAW. Framed within the European PositivMasc project, the aim of this study was to identify the areas for action to promote positive masculinities in preventing VAW in Spain, based on community stakeholders’ perceptions on their importance and applicability.MethodsA concept mapping study was carried out, involving a comprehensive and systematic approach that employs both a qualitative and quantitative methodology, between September 2019 and February 2022 in Spain. The research was conducted with a diverse sample of young people, both feminist activists and non-activists, as well as various professionals in the field under study.ResultsThe results of this study showed that the lines of action in order of importance are: prevention through formal and informal education, general skills for the population, personal work with men, media and social campaigns, governmental and legal measures, activism and support to social organizations. In turn, the order of these lines of action according to applicability in the Spanish context was: media and social campaigns, prevention through formal and informal education, general skills for the population, support to social organizations, activism, personal work with men and governmental and legal measures. Consensus was observed among the participants of different socio-demographic profiles, both at a quantitative level in the scores obtained and at a qualitative level with the interpretations that reinforced the results.ConclusionsThere is a need for a comprehensive multisectoral response involving different spaces to strengthen the scale, impact and sustainability of the efforts around anti-VAW masculinities. The evidence produced throughout this concept mapping study can contribute to inform policies to effectively prevent VAW by focusing on positive masculinities, ensuring they align with the perceptions and experiences of key community actors involved in the policy implementation process.

What do the bloody spiritualists say? Exploring menstruation advocacy and feminist frictions in Sweden

While globally menstruators are increasingly receiving support through solidarity campaigns, the menstruating body remains an ambivalent subject in Swedish politics and feminist scholarship. Menstruation activists emphasise that periods are both a local and global political issue, urging menstruators to become more aware of how their bodily cycles impact them. This article aims to explore a selection of narratives on menstruation as a political and spiritual phenomenon and investigate the still residual ambivalence in the relationship between feminism and menstrual advocacy in a Swedish context. The study is empirically anchored in a campaign for menstruation awareness combined with interviews with feminist women about menstruation as an experience and as a cultural phenomenon. The campaign, here called PeriodPride, addressed different topics, such as body literacy and menstrual solidarity. Drawing on an ethnographic study combined with a narrative approach, three narratives have been identified: (1) the menstruating body as a ‘woman’s issue’, (2) menstruators in need, remembering period poverty, and (3) the forceful cycle, reclaim the value of bodies. These narratives elucidate the discursive complexity of menstruation advocacy, underscoring its entanglement with multiple frameworks of meaning and revealing some of the productive tensions inherent within Swedish feminist traditions.

Storytelling and the campaign for abortion legalization in Argentina: the emblematic cases of Ana María Acevedo and Belén

ABSTRACT During the recent abortion rights campaign in Argentina that culminated in the 2020 legalization of abortion on request, the names of Ana María Acevedo and Belén were widely chanted in protests, the media, and the National Congress. These young women’s stories, which became emblems of Argentine feminist movements, centered around the denial of legal abortions and the criminalization of obstetric events, especially those of poor women in the interior of the country. This article examines the role of two emblematic cases of strategic litigation that took place during the Argentine abortion rights campaign. While the literature increasingly warns about the counter-productive effects of “negative” abortion narratives and legalistic approaches to feminist emancipatory causes, I show that these emblematic cases contributed to fostering a federalized coalition that played a key role in the mobilizations for abortion rights. Based on an analysis of archives and interviews, I argue that even as feminist movements relied on dominant gender and class norms to advocate for the implementation of lawful abortions, emblematic case building empowered local feminist movements through individual and collective transformations and solidarities, broadening discursive spaces surrounding abortion in different areas of the country.

Sexual assault or ‘just a bad date’? #MeToo and conceptualisations of sexual violence in the Twitter discussion of the allegations against Aziz Ansari

ABSTRACT The article explores the tensions between ‘common-sense’ and ‘continuum’ conceptualisations of sexual violence in public discourse during the height of the #MeToo social media movement in 2017. A particularly salient case study for analysis is identified in the publication of sexual assault allegations against actors Aziz Ansari on the website Babe.net in January 2018. This story proved especially controversial and sparked a public debate on the role of consent in everyday settings and the boundaries of what constitutes sexual violence. A thematic analysis of a sample of tweets discussing the case is carried out to explore how individuals understand the gendered and sexual dynamics of the encounter described in the story; the role played by gender and race in their interpretations; and how they position the case in relation to the #MeToo movement. The article finds that, despite the challenge posed by #MeToo to dominant notions of sexual violence, tensions continue to exist between ‘common-sense’ and ‘continuum’ definitions of sexual violence. This is evidenced by different interpretations of the events involving Ansari, the reliance on gendered and racialised tropes, and the complexity of using social media platforms for feminist activism.

Unveiling the online dynamics influencing the success and virality of TikTok social movements: A case study on pro and anti hijab feminist activism

When TikTok started as a youth-oriented platform, it was mostly used for light entertainment, including music, songs and dance clips. Today, however, it is often relied upon as a hub for social and political activism. Hashtags are an important affordance to create visibility and attract attention. Using a qualitative multimodal thematic analysis, this study examines the shifting patterns in TikTok’s nature as a social media platform and investigates its various affordances in the realm of activism, in general, and feminist activism, in particular. Adopting a comprehensive approach, which takes into account various dynamics, including the overall political and social context, the various actors and the deployed tools and tactics, this study investigates why and how some feminist TikTok campaigns, such as #MahsaAmini which erupted in Iran to resist the imposition of the hijab following the murder of Mahsa Amini, are more likely to go viral and gain more international visibility than other TikTok feminist campaigns, such as #HandsOffMyHijab which erupted in France to resist the hijab and niqab ban. Findings revealed how various factors contributed to increasing the virality and international visibility of the Iranian Mahsa Amini’s #WomanLifeFreedom campaign, including the used online tactics, the support of media and political actors, the power of celebrities and social media influencers, and the online and offline support by male figures. The undertaken thematic analysis identified different dominant themes and representations of hijab in the two online social movements, reflecting varying expressions of feminisms, activisms and resistance. In so doing, the study offers a conceptual model for understanding these online dynamics within the appropriate socio-political and cultural contexts.

La Internacional Socialista de Mujeres y los orígenes del Día Internacional de la Mujer Trabajadora (1907-1917)

This article analyzes the origin and objectives of the celebration of International Women's Day based on the study of North American and German socialists framed in the Socialist Women's International. The work focuses on discussions about the “woman question” and the fight for universal women's suffrage within the socialist parties of Germany and the United States, in particular about the relationship that socialists had to maintain with bourgeois feminist movements. Through qualitative documentary analysis, we will try to demonstrate that International Women's Day was an initiative of the Socialist Women's International, with great prominence of the German and American sections, as part of the fight for universal women's suffrage and to obtain better working and living conditions for workers. The commemoration of this date was articulated as an instance of agitation and propaganda of long-term political work that socialist women had been developing among working women since the end of the 19th century within the framework of the Second International.

#PerúPaísDeVioladores: a hashtag constellation against sexual violence

ABSTRACT In October 2017, in parallel to the viralization of the #MeToo hashtag, feminist movements in Peru flooded social media using another hashtag to confront rape culture. #PerúPaísDeVioladores – #PeruCountryOfRapists, in English – worked as a cry of outrage after a third case of sexual violence broke the news in the same month. This case study explores the role of the hashtag #PerúPaísDeVioladores in challenging hegemonic discourses on sexual violence and articulating asynchronous and multisited actions. By analysing Twitter posts and reviewing news and opinion columns associated with this social media campaign in three key moments in 2017 and 2020, I contend that the hashtag establishes an alternative interpretive framework that not only makes legible a range of cases as expressions of rape culture but also confronts dominant narratives that re-victimize survivors and conceal the systemic roots of sexual violence. Acting as a means of (dis)organization and overflowing of information, this hashtag creates a constellation in which digital content, in situ performances, and civil mobilizations integrate to denounce systemic violence against feminized bodies in Peru.

Durability Capacity of Women Cultivators Under Pressure of Forest and Land Fire Control Regulation in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

This study aims to explore the conditions of pressure and durability capacity of women cultivators facing the pressures of regulation on forest and land fire control in Indonesia. The results of this study highlight that the scientific knowledge and patriarchal capitalism perspective contribute to product regulation in Indonesia, and then creating women cultivators as a non-class subjects. Thus, the woman cultivators are victims of that regulation. Women cultivators have various complex strategies and adaptations in dealing with multiple pressures under regulations on one site, corporations and food estate programs on other sites. The act of burning fields is not intended to fight the rules, but an act with no alternatives for survival from the lowest view. The act of burning is an act of utilizing the capacity to produce and reproduce the capacity of remaining food sources and the capacity for subsistence independence. Understanding the act of burning fields by Oloh Ngaju women cultivators is an effort to understand the farming activities as rationalized by individual actions within the limits of their interests and limit power (setting the limits to domination). So it is very possible to propose the concept of subsistence feminism to see the type of the grassroots women's movement.

Women at Crossroads: Palestinian Women's Movements Between Nationalism, Secularism and Islamic Identity

Women at Crossroads: Palestinian Women's Movements Between Nationalism, Secularism and Islamic Identity

The Victims of Victims: Islamophobia in the South Korean Feminist Movement

The Victims of Victims: Islamophobia in the South Korean Feminist Movement

Sexual Violence in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

The present research article discusses one of the worst human disasters of the 20th century, which is the persecution of black women in a society considered the first in the world. The work sheds light on the history of the emergence of America as a superpower at the expense of others, including blacks. Blacks are among the most important victims who were subjected to the most heinous forms of injustice, including slavery and abhorrent racial discrimination. It discusses the tragic situation that black women in America suffered from in terms of color, gender, and the patriarchal system in the 20th century through works based on true stories. Despite the intellectual and cultural development that America is experiencing, it is still in the twentieth century adhering to the ideas of the patriarchal system that is unjust to women. The research deals with Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved and sheds light on the true meaning of slavery and sexual exploitation through the protagonist Sethe, as she embodied the suffering of black women in America, especially since it is based on a true story. Comparing it to Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, where the protagonist Celie embodied the injustice of the patriarchal system and sexism and its effects on black women in America. The research explores the symbolic and common themes between both novels: the sadism and hypocrisy in dealing with black women. It highlights the role of the feminist movement in contributing to lifting injustice against women and its effective role in this field as it has been, since its inception, the free voice of women and the defender of their full rights. The two selected works embody this important role, especially since one of the works is from the nineteenth century and the other from the twentieth century.

License to rape: examining digital activism around marital rape in India

ABSTRACT An analysis of 60,000 tweets surrounding the #MarriageStrike hashtag that trended as a reaction to marital rape laws in India showed that in certain situations, activists can appropriate a misogynistic hashtag for feminist activism. But while this certainly helped facilitate conversations around women’s rights, its ability to fight gender discrimination was limited. This study also marks the presence of Men’s Rights movements in the Indian digital activism space. Tweets displayed circumscribed awareness about minority and caste-related assault in traditionally marginalized groups, emphasizing critical characteristics of digital activism around sexual assault in India. Conversations noted the generational trauma of assault and highlighted a narrow public understanding regarding issues of consent. Relentless trolling and extreme misogyny, led by organizations protecting men’s rights, operated as a type of citizen vigilantism and cruelly delegitimized crucial conversations regarding sexual assault in marriage.

Reanalysis Of the Literary Works of Sarah Grand, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, And Yasar Nezihe from A Feminist Orientalist Perspective

We examine women's rights and freedoms using a comprehensive framework that includes all races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic categories, and is based on a systematic, conceptual, and theoretical approach. However, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was difficult to speak of a so well-established and comprehensive feminist movement. Furthermore, apart from many quantitative constraints such as restricted movement and the necessity for dependable and unbiased dissemination of knowledge across diverse nations, social strata, ethnicities, and genders, the orientalist viewpoint of the Western world has influenced the quality of feminist literature. Some major Western studies on women have portrayed Turkish women in a negative light, suggesting that they are oblivious to feminist principles. However, upon retrospective examination of British, American, and Turkish literary works created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it becomes evident that each society has exhibited analogous quests for woman’s rights and freedoms. The purpose of this article is to show collectivity of women's experiences regardless of race, socioeconomic class, or ethnicity, and to demonstrate that women's experiences, which are obscured by male-dominated discourse and orientalist perspectives, are similar in areas such as education, work right, representaation and violence, spanning from the past to the present. Accordingly, this article provides a comparative examination of three feminist literary works, "When the Door Opened_” (1908) by Sarah Grand, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “For May 1” (1923) by Yasar Nezihe Bukulmez.

Challenges Of Extreme Feminism: Impacts on The Feminist Movement in Contemporary Chinese Society

Challenges Of Extreme Feminism: Impacts on The Feminist Movement in Contemporary Chinese Society

Soekarno’s Perception on Discrimination Against Women in His Sarinah (1947) Memoir

This study aims to describe and explain Soekarno's perception of discrimination against women in his memoir Sarinah (1947). In this aspect, the role of women and Soekarno's hopes for the latest developments are blended in the role and discrimination against women. The material object of this study is a memoir entitled Sarinah. The formal object of this study is all of Soekarno's perceptions in Indonesian. Data collection was carried out using reading method developed with note-taking techniques and literature studies to collect data on social identity, knowledge, and beliefs of the author and literature searches to obtain data on situations in which the memoir was born. Data analysis was carried out by data reduction, data display, data verification, and conclusion of the results. The development of feminist movements in Europe, America, and other countries can benefit for the stimulator of Indonesian women that there would not a struggle without scarification. There is an important problem of Indonesian women, between their role in the period of colonialism and after national independence. Keywords: perception, discrimination, women’s roles, Soekarno’s hopes.

Faux Feminisms: Why feminism is a fight against oppression, not an individual cause

In her forthcoming book, Faux Feminisms: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop, Jay Newman Chair in Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College, NY, and Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center Serene Khader sets out to reframe the feminist movement as one for the collective advancement of all women.

Voices for Emancipation: A Speech Act Analysis of Feminist Activism on Twitter

This study investigates the utterances of three foremost women activists namely Marvi Sirmed, Mahira Khan and Resham claiming to uphold the cause of women emancipation. This study endeavors to probe this phenomenon by employing the speech act framework proposed by Searle (1969). Attention has been drawn to this realm because the global trends are in the wake of subverting gender disparity in favor of gender equality. The nature of this study is predominantly qualitative however; it also attempts to quantify the utterances in the form of their percentages. The data was extracted from the tweeter handles of the women activists. A total of twenty-one tweets have been reserved by subjecting them to the lines of judgmental sampling. The findings show that representative speech acts are 61.90%, expressives are 23.80% and directives are 14.28% respectively. So this outcome clearly marks the fact that women activists for the most part are engaged in expressing their emotions and depicting the situation which exists around them. But their utterances lack the sense of direction and orientation. This study contributes in understanding the orientation of Feminism in Pakistan particularly the trends on social media which though offers a platform to speak yet offers no guidelines for the clear direction.