Fourth Wave Feminism Research Articles

Reinstating Olympe de Gouges? A Graphic Odyssey

Since the mid-2010s, interest in Olympe de Gouges as a pioneer of feminism has consistently grown in the wake of fourth-wave feminism and international social movements such as #MeToo. After almost two centuries of oversight or representations of de Gouges as illiterate and a victim of her time, a number of historians and authors have been working to reinstate her legacy as a writer and actor of the French Revolution. In conjunction with this newfound interest in feminist figures like Olympe de Gouges, the literary field experienced a metamorphosis with the growing popularity of graphic novels, from both popular/mainstream and scholarly perspectives. This article proposes to analyze how the depiction of Olympe de Gouges in the eponymous graphic novel by Catel and José-Louis Bocquet in 2012 contributed to the mainstream recognition of de Gouges as well as subsequent feminist figures, and enabled the development of graphic biographies as a literary sub-genre.

Towards a feminist praxis and pedagogy in higher education: knowledge-building and social action in Pakistan

ABSTRACT The fourth wave of feminism in Pakistan represents a significant departure from earlier movements, evolving into an intersectional force with widespread participation from younger women. Recent scholarship notes this shift, highlighting how activists are not only demanding equal rights but also critiquing the private/public dichotomy by centreing the intimate spaces where patriarchy is most entrenched. In light of this new phase in the feminist landscape, this article examines the overlooked narratives and experiences of women activists at the Feminist Students Collective (FSC), a student-led collective based in Lahore, Pakistan. It is argued that FSC activists employ a feminist praxis to analyse coloniality and neoliberalism’s entanglement with patriarchy in higher education and beyond. Through mediums such as writing, dance, poetry, theatre, and social media activism, they counter Eurocentrism in institutional spaces of learning and forge epistemic connections across class, religion, ethnicity, and social location in activist spaces.

Gender and jazz research in Spain

During the last two decades, the little jazz research that has been conducted in Spain has focused on examining both flamenco jazz, as the most important contribution of Spanish culture to jazz, and sociocultural meanings of jazz development, mainly from a political and historical perspective. This period has also coincided with a significant development in jazz studies outside of the United States, and a key juncture for gender and feminist studies in Spain that concurred with the emergence of fourth-wave feminism. Spanish gender research in music has traditionally focused on written music, paying scant attention to jazz, although popular music is slowly becoming a significant focus of research. Far from seeing this as a drawback, we propose that the underdevelopment of knowledge production is an opportunity for a feminist-inspired overview, and a re-reading of jazz cultures and jazz research in Spain as we ‘listen’ for the relationships between gender and jazz as interdisciplinary fields of research. The article concludes that Spain presents fertile ground for a comprehensive exploration of its own jazz culture as research here strives to find its own voice.

Female stereotypes and female empowerment in advertising: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

AbstractThis systematic literature review (SLR) seeks to foster the presence of feminism and women's diversity in advertising through a systematic, transparent, and rigorous framework‐based review and the 4Ws1H (What, Where, Why, and HoW) analysis. The study provides three main contributions. First, it offers an innovative conceptual framework for examining female stereotypes and female empowerment in advertising by categorizing the 21st‐century literature into the four evolutive eras of feminism: prefeminism, feminism, postfeminism, and the fourth wave of feminism. Second, this SLR reveals prevailing research trends, predominant research methodologies, frequently explored geographical regions, and industries of focus while providing a roadmap for future research endeavors. Finally, it acknowledges the lasting impact of femvertising as a response to consumer demands during the fourth wave of feminism and its role in promoting diversity and inclusion in advertising, encompassing disabilities, ethnicity, age, and gender identity. The main research trends uncovered in this study encompass the effects of female stereotypes, the sexualization of women in advertising, attitudes related to the brand, and the exploration of female empowerment. Qualitative methodologies emerged as the dominant approach in this research landscape, with a particular focus on countries boasting high gender equality. Furthermore, industries that predominantly target women in their advertising campaigns, such as fashion, luxury apparel, beauty, and personal care, occupy a central position in the existing body of literature. These findings encourage scholars to embark on future research aligned with the proposed research trends, particularly in regions characterized by lower gender equality and within gender‐neutral or male‐dominated industries.

Interseksionele feminisme in Afrikaanse poësie: Lynthia Julius se Uit die kroes

In the current transnational discourse on fourth-wave feminism, "intersectional feminism" is a fundamental concept. The representation of marginalised voices of especially Black women from underrepresented contexts, such as the Global South, is emphasised in an attempt to decolonise the formal domains of literature, academia and the media. Historically, there is a gap in the representation of diverse Black female voices in South African literatures. However, there has recently been an increase in the publication of the literary texts by previously marginalised voices, especially in Afrikaans poetry. Diverse perspectives are shared regarding the complexities of the intersection of identity categories including race, gender, culture, identity, class, language and socioeconomic status in South African society, and how it affects the previously marginalised. A voice that represents intersectional feminist issues in the South African and Afrikaans contexts can be found in Lynthia Julius's debut poetry book, Uit die kroes (From the kroes, 2020). In this article, the significance of Julius's unique, intersectional feminist viewpoint, with stories and perspectives from the Northern Cape, is investigated. The focus is specifically on how Julius represents a 'triple marginalised' voice in the South African and Afrikaans contexts with regard to her gender, race and language. Furthermore, I will discuss how the uniqueness of her collection of poems and Northern Cape Afrikaans, that have rarely been provided with a platform in the Afrikaans literary canon, contribute to giving a voice to the historic 'voiceless'. The importance of Julius's voice and how it highlights the heterogeneity of previously marginalised groups in South Africa, are also explored. In conclusion it is argued that the publication of poets with diverse intersectional feminist perspectives, such as Julius, can be deemed a positive step in the direction of the decolonising process of the Afrikaans literature and feminism.

The Evolution of Feminist Revolutionary Garments Against Patriarchy in the Fourth-wave Feminist Movement

During the fourth-wave feminist movement, a great deal of variation is produced in the forms and symbolic systems of feminist revolutionary garments. The relationship between feminism and fashion is complex during the feminist revolt against patriarchy. Some individuals view fashion as an instrument of patriarchal domination through the restraint of the female body. Some arguments believe that fashion, as revolutionary garments, can be borrowed as a method and catalyst for a feminist revolution. Social media has provided a wider digital space for feminist activism, and connections and collaborations between feminists from different classes and cultures have become easy to establish. Hence, easily recognisable logos and simpler symbol systems were the main hallmarks of this phase of feminist revolutionary garments. This paper focuses on the characteristics, advantages, and reasons for the emergence of feminist revolutionary garments in the fourth wave of the feminist movement by comparison with previous feminist revolutionary garments. Disadvantages and potential crises of these garments, such as excessive consumerism, still exist. Overall, the expressive potential of these revolutionary garments remains difficult to ignore.

Change in Meaning of Hugh Hefner and Playboy: From Horatio Alger to Sexual Predator

Between 1953 and 2023, mass media changed how they cover Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine. My thesis is that the defining narratives of Hugh Hefner and his famous creation involved five distinct media personas, which were entrepreneur, activist, paradox, tragic figure, and predator. Using key magazine articles as central points of information, I consider how changes in Playboy's success combined with cultural shifts in the structure of feeling, such as fourth-wave feminism and the Me Too movement, to transform the dominant representation of Hugh Hefner from an entrepreneurial Horatio Alger to a salacious predator. Media attention after his death recognizes that Hugh Hefner had a definite but undeniably controversial influence on American life.

Communicating through Cyberfeminism: Communication Strategies for the Construction of the International Feminist Strike in Portugal

Despite the considerable attention given to how mainstream media portrays feminism and social movements, there remains a notable research gap regarding the exploration of how these movements themselves engage in internal articulation and employ communication strategies to connect with their publics. To examine communications practices of cyberfeminists within the fourth wave of feminism and the 8M movement (feminist strike), this study analyzes the communication platforms utilized by Rede 8 de Março, which mobilizes the strike in Portugal in three dimensions: (1) institutional and internal communication; (2) content production for online dissemination on digital platforms; and (3) mobilization strategies and action repertoires. Specifically, we focus on the years 2020 and 2021, considering the pandemic context, using a combination of netnography and semi-structured interviews with organizing activists. Our findings indicate a significant rise in Instagram’s platform utilization and exploration, concomitant with the establishment of WhatsApp as a central tool for both organizational and internal communication. These observations enhance our scholarly grasp of the intricate communication dynamics inherent in these organizational contexts and feminist movements, thereby offering significant contributions to our understanding of its operational mechanisms.

Parthenogenesis (“Virgin Birth”): A Woman’s Futile Attempt at Achieving Recognition

This article demonstrates how a contemporary British writer, Clare Chambers, in her novel Small Pleasures (2020), applies fourth-wave feminist notions when describing historical events from 1955–1956, namely an actual attempt to prove parthenogenesis (“virgin birth”) by scientific methods. Such an analysis reflects important social and cultural changes that have taken place in the last six decades regarding women’s reproductive rights and autonomy, body image, and lesbianism. The paper shows that in contrast to the conservative and repressive postwar British society that viewed lesbianism and the idea of conception through parthenogenesis as a deviation from accepted norms, contemporary representations of the latter issues have undergone tremendous change. The paper also shows how Chambers insinuates a much more recent outlook on parthenogenesis often held by members of the lesbian community, particularly its members who belong to the separatist wing. This view includes both utopian and dystopian ideas. Finally, the role of sensational and tabloid journalism in influencing public opinion and, consequently, in shaping social and cultural constructs is described.

할리우드 영화의 여성 연대에 관한 연구

This paper analyzed how female solidarity is represented in Hollywood films and its characteristics. Three classifications of Conventional Solidarity, Affectional Solidarity, and Reflective Solidarity suggested by Jodi Dean are used as theoretical frameworks in order to explain this. Before the fourth wave feminism, female characters were often portrayed as holding each other in check and keeping their distance from others. However, since 2011, when the fourth wave feminism began, the relationship between women in movies has been represented differently than before. Women share value norms to accomplish common interests, have conventional solidarity, and sometimes get together in affectional solidarity in which they internally cooperate with each other through mutual consideration and love and they also unite in reflective solidarity that can coexist even in the differences. Solidarity is a driving force that may achieve something; in a male-centered society, female solidarity was regarded as difficult one to be formed however relationships between women are being rebuilt through solidarity.

Türkiye’de Dijital Feminist Aktivizm: Uzun Süredir Beklenen Dördüncü Dalga Feminizm Geldi mi?

Throughout different waves of feminisms, women have called attention to sexist political and social norms across countries. Starting from the first wave feminist demands of suffrage to third wave’s intersectional feminist politics, women activists have struggled to achieve gender equality in different contexts. With an emphasis on intersected identities, fourth wave feminism, also called digital feminism, endeavours to implement third wave’s concepts in the digital space, via blogs, websites, social media platforms. In Turkey, in the second decade of the 2000s, women have started to extensively use social media to combat patriarchy, particularly violence against women and femicide, and to increase communication and solidarity among women in line with the political opportunity structures in the country. Through digital platforms, women stimulate political change by exposing gendered discourses. However, due to government’s increased control on digital spaces, activists’ capacity to alter the social gendered structure has been limited. Nevertheless, digital spaces still have a great potential to work as counterpublics for marginalised groups, such as women.

#WomanWorld Post-Feminism?

#WomanWorld is an instagram comic series created by @aminder_d with the sci-fi comedy genre by presenting the lives of a group of women who struggle for their survival in the post-extinction world of men. The #WomanWorld comic presents a series of characters who represent freedom of expression by carrying the feminist concept from the first wave to the post-feminist phase. With technology and social media networks, as well as the fourth wave feminism movement has been started, this study examines the extent of the content of feminism and post-feminism in this comic. Netnography and Textual Analysis are a method to know which one is Feminism and Post-feminism contained in this comic. This article shows how the storyline and characters in comics represent the concept of first to third wave feminism. By using post-feminism conceptual dialogue, this comic reverses its axis by creating an understanding that the desired world of women has been created, women are no longer struggling to get choices of life.

A critical examination of epistemological congruence between intersectionality and feminist poststructuralism: Towardan integrated framework for health research.

The theoretical perspectives of intersectionality and poststructuralism have contributed meaningfully to advancing issues of social injustice within the realm of women's health research. However, the question of whether the two approaches are epistemologically commensurate has been at the heart of a polarized debate within third- and fourth-wave feminist literature in recent years. In this paper, we draw on the extant literature to explore existing dilemmas within this debate and critically reflect on points of epistemological tension and congruence between the two perspectives. It will be demonstrated that intersectionality and poststructuralism, especially feminist poststructuralism, represent concordant theoretical perspectives and a synthesized theoretical framework for application in qualitative research into women's health will be proposed. We argue that an intersectional feminist poststructuralist framework contributes to a deepened analysis of women's disparate healthcare experiences, and the social mechanisms, power relations, and discourses that mediate these experiences, while offering avenues for advocacy and political praxis on a multitude of levels.

Intersectionality and Fourth-Wave Feminism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other

From the 2010s the feminist movement has gained new impetus through widespread transnational activism, fierce resistance to continuing misogyny and sexual violence as well as by fresh currents in feminist thought. Thus, journalists and scholars characterize the proliferation of both grassroots activism and renewed discourses on women’s rights in the media and in academic, political and public discussions as the emergence of a fourth wave of feminism. As a highly thought-provoking literary manifestation of these renewed discourses, Bernardine Evaristo’s verse novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) narrates the experiences of twelve (mainly) Black women in all stages of life, from young adulthood to late life. It highlights their concerns with issues of feminism, intersectionality and intergenerational relations and sets them in a historical-comparative perspective. By interweaving the experiences and memories of several generations of women and their repeated encounters with sexual harassment and gender discrimination throughout different times and places, the novel exposes the persistence of misogyny and sexism as a systemic problem. It is especially these intersectional and intergenerational perspectives that draw attention to deep-rooted structural inequalities. Thereby, and in opposition to any post-feminist stances, Evaristo’s writing gives momentum to the present, transnational feminist movement and can be considered one of the foundational literary texts of the fourth wave of feminism.

The Pluralization of Feminist Hashtag Landscapes: An Exploratory Mapping of Feminist Hashtags on Portuguese Instagram

Feminist hashtags are often studied in the context of concise and highly visible hashtag movements. However, most social media and hashtag use exist outside the narrow confines of such movements. This article broadens the scope of exploration of hashtag feminisms, encompassing not only well-defined hashtag movements but also generic hashtags where feminist action might not be overtly or strategically mobilized. It grounds these explorations on the mapping of the Portuguese landscape of feminist hashtags on Instagram. Starting from four hashtags—#feminismoportugal, #igualdadedegénero, #naopartilhes, and #portugalmaisigual—this study explores hashtagging practices in 294 posts created by 101 users. Combining the analysis of a hashtag co-occurrences network with qualitative close readings, this article explores how these online practices incorporate varied typologies of fourth-wave feminist action, how a focus on intersectionality can be conducive to a heterogeneous and differentiated hashtag landscape, and how questions of effectiveness of hashtag activism can be problematized by low metrics of engagement. As such, this exploration of the Portuguese feminist hashtag landscape serves as an entry point for a critical reflection on the everyday uses of feminist hashtags, illustrating the tensions, complexities, and contradictions that such pluralized hashtag landscapes can encompass.

Book review: Feminist perspectives on contemporary educational leadership

This timely book explores how various feminist perspectives fruitfully explain women’s experience of educational leadership, drawing on a contemporary conceptualisation of fourth-wave feminism that is intersectional and inclusive. The book asks which and whose feminist theory is used to explain gender and feminism in educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA): the scholar’s, the research participant’s or a combination of the two in the co-construction of knowledge from an intersectional feminist perspective. It conceptualises intersectional and inclusive feminist perspectives on educational leadership, theorising research through a Black British feminist perspective, a gender and Islamic perspective and a queer theory perspective, depending on the self-identification of participants. It explores digital feminism and men’s pro-feminism. The book identifies feminist leadership praxis as a focus for future research and explores how leaders can draw on funds of knowledge, identity cultural wealth and lead and educate diverse populations of students. Highlighting the importance of intersectional feminist perspectives in ELMA, the book will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of inclusive educational leadership and management, gender studies and feminism.

Home is where the hate is: gender, race, class and the domestic abuse plotline in fiction and on screen

ABSTRACT The article examines the representation of domestic violence in the novel and screen versions of The Girl on the Train and series 1 and 2 of Big Little Lies. It argues that in the last five years there has been a boom in depictions of domestic abuse, ranging from radio and soap operas, such as The Archers and Eastenders, to the “glossy” screen productions examined in the article. This reflects fourth-wave feminist interest in hidden forms of gendered violence and the extension to existing laws on intimate partner abuse in the US and UK. This article argues that, while the popular female-authored domestic crime novels that The Girl on the Train and Big Little Lies are based on highlight economic disadvantage and patriarchal privilege as factors determining domestic abuse, the screen adaptations veer towards an emphasis on individual couple dynamics and victim-blaming. It focuses particularly on sexism and racism in the second series of Big Little Lies. Written by veteran Hollywood screenwriter David E. Kelley along with high-profile white female stars, the series shifts emphasis away from gendered violence and towards intergenerational female conflict by blaming domestic violence on two older female figures, one of them an African-American woman.

“Lo vamos a conseguir”: Instapoetry as a vehicle for feminist movements in the contemporary Spanish context

ABSTRACT In this addition to the European Journal of English Studies special issue, the author reflects on the employment of social media application Instagram by contemporary poets in peninsular Spain as a tool for projecting societal concerns specifically related to feminism and social equality movements, proliferated by technological affordances such as the graphological hashtag (#). By analysing the connections between poetry, digital culture and feminist activism, this article examines the poetry of popular Instapoetas Elvira Sastre and Leticia Sala and its underlying feminist message, as well as the implications of writing in and of the so-called “fourth wave of feminism.” Where the poetic content, visual imagery and captioned employment of hashtags are seen to perpetuate the work of offline, feminist activism, Instapoetry can be seen as an assistant or a “valid contribution” to collective action.

The ghosts of old readers: social media, representation and gender in the information sector

ABSTRACT Social media has become an almost ubiquitous method of communication and engagement, not only in the information sector but right across the increasingly digitalized world. Likewise, it has played a large role in the development of fourth-wave feminism and in movements such as #YesAllWomen, #FreeTheNipple and #MeToo, as well as in calls for improvements to the representation of gender in media. This paper draws together both aspects in order to critique and reflect upon the current usage of social media as it pertains to the representation of gender in UK university libraries, archives and special collections. It explores the challenges of utilizing such media for academic institutions deeply rooted in discourses of authority and heteronormative patriarchal power. It uses a sample of social media posts to foreground and examine a number of successes and shortcomings, with discussions informed by critical theory. In particular, foundational texts of feminist theory, such as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Black Looks: Race And Representation (1992) by bell hooks, are used to frame explorations of gender and intersectionality in university collections; ultimately seeking to discover how information professionals may better represent the diverse nature of their collections on social media platforms.

Information technologies, fourth-wave feminism and the perspectives of its studying 295 Submission guidelines

Information technologies, fourth-wave feminism and the perspectives of its studying 295 Submission guidelines