Gender Struggles Research Articles

מאבק הפועלות בענפי הסלילה והבניין, 1940-1920 : השתייכות, התבדלות ובניית הכוח

In the 1920s and 1930s, women in the urban Yishuv fought for their inclusion in the paving and construction industries. This was one of the most prominent struggles of women, which pitted them against market forces, conservative attitudes, and the efforts to preserve male dominance that had pushed women to the margins. Their goal was to integrate within the centers of economic activity and social mobility. The successes and failures of this struggle, presented here for the first time, are a significant part of the history of the gender struggle narrative, the paving and construction industries in Israel, and urban labor during the Mandate period. An examination of the five main strategies in the struggle reveals two primary axes. The first operated according to the logic dictated by capitalist market principles, including several classic strategies used by minorities in the labor market. These were based on leveraging the advantages of social and economic inferiority, and efforts focused primarily on integration into the workforce and its governing institutions. The second operated according to the political logic of power-building and was based on an analysis of power structures within the Zionist labor movement, and the replication of separatist methods of operation. The women's labor movement as a whole and each individual female worker on her own navigated their way through the limited space between belonging to the general labor force and gender-based differentiation. In this article, I will show that the processes of integration into the labor movement actually solidified women's marginal status in the labor market, while differentiation processes strengthened their political standing and improved their conditions within it.

Bodies and learning trajectories: a ‘post’ feminist approach to the experience of Spanish students in higher education

ABSTRACT Feminist theories have broadly delved into the discourse surrounding bodies (Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Their contributions have subverted the idea that bodies are merely passive matter, opening up new ways of conceptualizing the world in corporeal terms. Their insights have been useful in understanding that human bodies emerge in situated-historical encounters, and cannot be separated from mind. This holds significant implications for the field of education (hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Abingdon: Routledge). In this article, we depart from the project ‘TRAY-AP: Learning trajectories of undergraduate students: conceptions, strategies, technologies, and contexts'. Reading from ‘posts’ perspectives such as feminist new materialisms, the affective turn or posthumanisms, helps us to think through relational ontologies, beyond dualisms, embracing a commitment to the human and morethan-human bodies. Through these perspectives, the project helps us to deepen into how Spanish higher education students conceive their bodies and the role of bodies in their learning trajectories. The paper concludes by shedding light on how bodies are still considered inert beings, but students see their learning processes as corporeal and embodied, intersected by gender struggles.

Counter-discourses to social inequalities and urban modernity: Subaltern women in post-2000s Chinese science fiction

ABSTRACT The issues of resurgent class and gender inequalities, rapid urbanization, and huge regional disparity were a notable focus of many post-2000s Chinese science fiction, which vividly created images of subaltern females. This paper looks at how contemporary Chinese sci-fi authors seek social justice by representing the experiences of various subaltern women within the specific genre of science fiction. It argues that the images of socially and culturally marginalized women were used as effective tools for questioning the intersectional social inequalities in contemporary China. The works discussed in this article all problematize the nature and influences of urban modernity by revealing the intersections, tensions, and contradictions between subaltern women and the classed, gendered modernization process. The sci-fi realist portrayal of subaltern agency and gender struggle also helps to generate powerful counter-discourses to urban modernity and technological utopia.

Dislodging the hegemony of the white epistemological frame

In South African public discourse, the concept of gender appears to be cognate with the category of woman. Given the presence of masculinity studies in South Africa, the normative view of gender does include both men and women, but in the South African public discourse, gender is still largely cognate with woman. Accordingly, I am interested in this conceptual disconnect between gender and men, specifically within the Black community. Although this disconnect is attributed to the distribution of opportunities and the prevalence of gender-based violence, both said to largely disadvantage women, I contend that this disconnect is possible because of liberalism’s concealment of anti-Black racism, producing epistemic blindness. In other words, the juridical incorporation of Black people into liberalism not only masked the reality of their ontological domination, it imposed a narrow epistemic trajectory over the concept of ‘gender’. As such, while anti-Black racism is considered non-hegemonic, the gender struggle assumed the fundamental contradiction of the liberal democratic order. However, the gendering of Black people in the 1994 dispensation has a differential impact between Black men and Black women, enabling the latter to capitalise on the concealment of anti-Black racism while the former are crippled by the colonial legacy of Blackness.

The Woman’s Struggles in Searching for Gender Equality Depicted in the Novel “Bekisar Merah” by Achmad Tohari

Currently, women on the island of Java have experienced extraordinary developments in social life so that they feel extraordinary freedom and are even considered excessive (overcapacity), giving rise to their own unrest in the gender struggle. Therefore, this research aims to discuss the representation of Javanese women and the struggle for gender equality in a patriarchal system in the novel “Bekisar Merah” by Ahmad Tohari. This research uses a descriptive method and uses a qualitative approach carried out by Miles, Huberman, and Saldana (2018) in analyzing the data. The main data in this article are sentences, phrases and paragraphs of the novel. The research results show that in seeking gender equality, Lasi faces struggles in maintaining marital bonds, consistently maintaining identity and self-esteem, being free from sexual temptation, and the struggle to find true love in the real world. This research reveals that loyalty and integrity towards family is a priority in the struggle for gender equality. This research implies that to achieve gender equality requires steadfastness in good principles and values.

Review Essay on Global and World Histories of Feminism and Gender Struggle

Review Essay on Global and World Histories of Feminism and Gender Struggle

Book Review: It’s Not Where You Live, It's How You Live: Class and Gender Struggles in a Dublin Estate by John Bissett

Book Review: <i>It’s Not Where You Live, It's How You Live: Class and Gender Struggles in a Dublin Estate</i> by John Bissett

Collective resilience and resistance in hybrid times: gender struggles in Germany, Turkey and Sweden

In activist circles, the concept of resilience seems to have captured the spotlight once enjoyed by resistance. Instead of treating resilience as antithetical to resistance, and a discursive neoliberal vehicle that seeks individual solutions to collective problems, this article demonstrates its relationality to resistance in the context of online/offline struggles of feminist and LGBTI + activists challenged by mobilizations against gender and sexual rights. Reflecting on the discussions and outputs of a series of digital workshops involving activists from Germany, Turkey and Sweden, the article investigates from a transnational perspective the meanings and aspects of collective resilience in the anti-gender context, and what resilience entails in the increasing online/offline hybridity of activism. Three themes emerge from this investigation: the connectedness of resistance and resilience across scale and context, the pronouncing of care and support networks as activist resources, and the emergence of the need and efforts to develop new alliances and solidarity structures in the face of the dual challenges of anti-gender mobilizations and neoliberalism. Resistance and resilience are intertwined in gender struggles taking place in the anti-gender context, in that the cultivation of resilience through care networks, the mobilization of positive affect, and the formation of dynamic and flexible solidarities enable and help sustain resistances in the online/offline interface. While online/offline hybridity offers opportunities to develop and sustain individual/collective resources, the article finds, attention should be paid to the processes of exclusion of underprivileged women and queer people in hybrid times.

Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul

Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul

“She is Present in Offstage, Absent in Mainstream”- Unheard Voices of Women in Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari

This work seeks to constitute the unexplored area in Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari, which is the lack of representation and absent female voices in the novel, by looking at the liminality of their participation in the larger rubric of politics, education and economics etc. The research examines the ‘subjectivity and positioning of women’, which is in contrast to the delineation of the male voices in the novel. The work diverges from the current readings of the text, which focuses on the satirical aspect of the novel. The paper accentuates on the autonomy of women and their indulgence in the role play of the novel by locating them within the corpus of Anchalik Literature. The paper is doing textual analysis by aid of feminist reading of the novel. The task is accomplished, keeping in mind the Feminist Mystique theory of Betty Friedan and Patricia Collins and Dorothy Smith’s Feminist Standpoint Theory. The main findings of the research demonstrate the urgency of issue where feminine ideals of women are completely out of the picture. The larger concern of this paper not only focuses on the objectivity of women but also their subjectivity. As a result, the research shifts the lens of looking at it from satirical framework to inherent gender struggles in the narrative.

Cooking and feminism through Argentine literature

This essay analyzes women’s connections with cooking through the work of three female writers from Argentina. I uncover key moments in the history of the country in which culinary practices represent a channel for larger reflections on gender struggles and women’s rights. I distinguish three representative cases within the complex and rich relationship between women, cooking, and feminism in Argentine literature: the incursion of nineteenth-century writers in recipe books; the feminists of the 1980s and their use of the culinary language as a political and erotic expression; and cooking and food as an exploration of new social and sexual orders in contemporary literature. Within each period, I focus on a particular writer and literary work: Juana Manuela Gorriti’s Cocina ecléctica (1890), Tununa Mercado’s short story “Antieros” (1988), and Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s Las aventuras de la China Iron (2017). These Argentine authors provide their knowledge on the diverse cultural roots and habits in South American cooking and give predominance to senses and desire over rational prescriptions on women’s bodies, among other narrative strategies. Thus, analyzed as a corpus, these authors give us a broader idea of feminist practices through cooking and, ultimately, expand multiple meanings of feminism itself from a local perspective.

Feminism of Charal

My article intends to focus on the prevalent silent predilection for mainstream feminism. Dalit feminism perpetrates through discrimination on the caste, class and gender struggle, whereas mainstream feminism has portrayed the struggle that centres around those who are higher in the caste hierarchy. Mainstream feminism has not yet delved into the struggle of those who are striving to raise their voice against the ‘triple monster’ as is coined by Bama in an interview. The triple monster here connotes caste, class and gender bias. My article will read the struggle of women Bangla Dalit writers who are suppressed and oppressed by this ‘triple Monster’. My primary text includes Chandalinir Kabita and Chandalini Bhone by Kalyani Thakur Charal. The article will also read Ami Kano Charal Likhi. Along with these, my article will bring in the contrast of women Dalit writers from another state, for instance, Bama from Tamil Nadu and Urmila Pawar from Maharashtra. The conflict lies here in the fact that the women Bangla Dalit writers in Bengal are subjugated extensively. The article will confront the struggle of Dalit feminism in a world where mainstream feminism reigns and rules securely. Against feminism, Kalyani Thakur Charal asserts that she prefers the term womanism more since womanism has penetrated through those layers that are not yet being evaded by mainstream feminism. Thereby, the article will bring in the concept of Dalit womanism along with the aforementioned statements.

Women, North-South migration and artisanal and small-scale mining in Ghana: Motivations, drivers and socio-economic implications

This paper investigates the internal migration dynamics involving women from the Northern part of Ghana to the South to engage in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech mineral extraction and processing. The North-South migration of women to the South is underpinned by socio-cultural and economic reasons, which we found to fall under two broad factors: motivations and drivers. In this paper, the motivations are conceptualised as factors or reasons that propel Northern women to migrate to the South to take up employment in ASM whereas the drivers are defined as the factors that push Northern women away from their villages or towns to Southern Ghana for ASM-related activities. Under the motivations, women from the North moved to ASM communities in the South to obtain income for alternative livelihoods and economic diversity as well as their economic empowerment. Concerning the drivers, poverty, quest for social recognition and contribution to family needs, lack of productive employment opportunities, unattractive nature of agriculture and patriarchal socio-cultural norms explain why Northern women migrate to ASM communities in Southern Ghana. To put this into perspective, the Northern women are driven by certain economic and socio-cultural factors from their urban and rural abodes in the North into ASM spaces in the South. These ASM spaces also present their own gendered struggles for these Northern women who have to navigate the complex transcultural and socio-economic contexts they find themselves. The lives of these Northern women involve moving from one culturally and economically limiting environment, and surviving (or even flourishing) in yet another gendered, patriarchal, statutorily criminalised ASM environment. Therefore, we discuss how these Northern women navigate between these ‘two worlds’– their source regions in the North and their ASM destinations in the South – and the factors within ASM in Southern Ghana that make their survival and flourishing possible. The linkages between Northern women's migration and ASM formalisation are also discussed.

(Trans)gendering Abolition

AbstractBlack trans people are made visible within dominant media coverage as spectacularized subjects, often coming into view only on being violated by the state and its actors. Yet and still, Black trans counter-hegemonic conceptions of PIC abolition continue to be created amidst this background of terror. Through a close reading of texts, including Janet Mock's Redefining Realness, Cheryl Dunye's Stranger Inside, Jac Gares's Free CeCe!, and songs by Jay-Marie Hill, this article asserts that these works constitute an intellectual archive of Black trans geographies. These geographies challenge the notion of carcerality by offering abolitionist visions of communal care and connectivity. By understanding the role of art in the proliferation of abolitionist struggle, we can appreciate abolition as a gender struggle and encounter more nuanced depictions of Black trans life.

Between Hope and Struggle: The Gender Struggle and the Jewish Socialist Parties in Interwar Poland

ABSTRACT With the reestablishment of independent Poland in 1918, women were given the right to vote. This progressive step reflected the hopes to create “a new world” within the Polish state. Two Jewish socialist parties, the Bund and Poalei Zion, were well aware of the changing political and social realities and adapted their political programs. The parties adopted a progressive approach toward women's status both in the private and the public spheres. As socialist Jewish parties, their main focus was Jewish women workers who suffered from “triple suppression” – as workers, as women and as Jews. On the surface, Jewish socialist parties demanded equal rights for all women. However, in this article I will argue that, in practice, the parties’ relation to the question of women equality was ambivalent. Notwithstanding the progressive agenda that was propagated, the traditional “sex role” of women was preserved in the parties' inner circles.

FILM DANGAL DALAM ANALISIS JACQUES DERRIDA

This paper examines the Indian film Dangal which is taken from a true story about gender injustice experienced by female wrestling athletes. This fact encourages women's wrestling athletes' gender struggle efforts that result in gender equality. The courage of this film to raise the issue of gender struggle needs to be investigated using Jacques Derrida's analysis. By using descriptive-qualitative method and Derrida's philosophical analysis, this research finds several things. First, there is gender inequality experienced by Indian women in the field of wrestling because of the strength of the patriarchal system. Second, there is logocentrism, namely the logic of thinking that is centered on male authority which is detrimental to women. Third, there is a binary opposition that attaches women to evil while men to good. Third, gender struggle in the form of narrative battles to reveal differance, namely efforts to blur the meaning of women's traditional identities followed by deconstruction of the patriarchal system which finally achieves gender equality in the sport of wrestling.

Bodies of and against austerity: gendered dispossession, agency and struggles for worth in Portugal

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The Persistence of Gender Struggles in Nordic Research and Innovation

Despite being renowned for their gender equality, the Nordic countries continue to suffer from persistent inequalities including in research and innovation (R&I) as an employment field. Drawing on interviews conducted between 2017 and 2020 with women and men working in R&I inside and outside of the academy, and on Charles Tilly’s (1998) conceptualisations of durable inequalities, the authors find that specific and cumulative gendered disadvantages accompany women’s R&I careers at each of the four researcher career stages (doctoral student, postdoc, researcher/lecturer, full professor), in particular through unquestioned informal everyday practices.

Rohana Kuddus: Gender Dan Gerakan Sosial-Politik

Emancipation and Gender Equality became a hot issue in the 20s. Women are judged to be entitled to the same rights as men in education, politics, economics, and others. Rohanna Kuddus, a woman from Koto Gadang, West Sumatra, dedicates her life to improving women of origin. In the 19th century, Minangkabau women were still underprivileged and marginalized. Rohana Kuddus believes that women must make a move to change their condition. Various movements were pioneered by Rohanna Kudus, ranging from gender struggle movements to politics. Rohana Kuddus: Gender and Socio-Political Movements uses research methods to collect interview sources, books, journals, and data from the internet that discusses Ruhana Kuddus. The limit of this paper is to look at the movements of Rohanna Kuddus in achieving gender equality and the various political movements that are running.

A Decomposition of Socially Constructed Image of Omani Female Professionals: Multidimensional Tension Embedded

This paper strives to present voices of Omani female professionals with the purpose of gaining deeper understanding of their aspirations, fears, and drives through a decomposition and further exploration of the construct of working females. The content obtained from one WhatsApp group discussion (9 participants) and two focus group discussions (13 participants) has been analyzed and categorized into three types of images - self-image of female professionals; image of female professionals through the eyes of males as inferred and interpreted by females themselves; image of female professionals through the eyes of another female. The emerged themes accompanied by communicative strategies confirm an on-going gender struggle in the country’s professional context. It also captures the inconsistencies and conflicting narratives embedded in the construct of Omani female professionals. The findings challenge traditional gender hierarchies and add to the discussion on the engagement of traditionally disadvantaged groups.