Wave Feminism Research Articles

Neoliberal feminism and intergenerational relations at work: an analysis of media representations of feminist mentorship in popular culture

ABSTRACT Generational conflict is often understood as central to social change, and more so concerning the development of feminism, as expressed through the mapping of feminist history in opposing waves. The opposition between younger and older women is also a common trope in popular culture, often aimed at describing the conflict between different generations of women and their understanding of gender and gender relations. However, since the emergence of the #MeToo phenomenon in 2016, new representations of intergenerational female relationships have emerged, specifically in the workplace. In this context, conflict does not necessarily foreclose dialogue, but is part of a more rounded relationship that encompasses solidarity and growth, taking the shape of feminist mentorship. Through the analysis of three popular shows (The Good Fight, The Bold Type, Hacks), I investigate the emergence of the trope of feminist mentorship in popular culture and argue that, while these texts offer more positive representations of intergenerational feminist relations, they expand neoliberal feminism’s focus on workplace success for female empowerment by making work the preferred site of feminist activism.

Passivity and Gender: Psychical inertia and maternal stillness

ABSTRACT Who is afraid of passivity? Historically, women and minoritized people have had good reason to be, given that passivity has been a way to keep them out of the world of “reason.” Freud’s move from the activity/passivity binary as the principle of all instinct, to its gendering as femininity/passivity and masculinity/activity, leads him to assert the “repudiation of femininity” as the bedrock of psychic life (Freud, S. 1937. “Analysis Terminable and Interminable.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 23, 209–254. London: Hogarth Press). This has led to a generative history of feminist, queer and Black psychoanalytic scholarship that constantly re-opens the question of female subjectivity and sexuality, and what we mean by psychic femininity and masculinity. However, what does remains as “bedrock,” even in this theorizing, is the figure of the mother in the internal world of the infant – supposedly castrated yet all-powerful, and requiring that the infant defend itself against what is stirred up as a result of dependency on her. After reviewing some of the psychoanalytic debates about femininity, I turn to “stillness” rather than passivity to suggest that we can identify a maternal element that is on the side of development, a figuration of psychical inertia that holds the capacity for waiting, stopping, ceasing and withdrawing in a world in which these mental functions are sorely missing.

Sisters in the “Hostile Environment”: A Womanist Theological Analysis of Brexit

ABSTRACT This article builds upon Anthony Reddie's Theologising Brexit by offering a womanist perspective in response to his postcolonial and liberationist critique. In keeping with the framing of Reddie's argument I begin with history, by drawing on feminist historians which demonstrate that British enslavement, colonialism and mission should be understood as gendered as well as racialised forms of oppression in Africa and the Caribbean. In the second section, I critique Britain's “hostile environment” policies and Brexit as continuations of Britain's White supremacist and masculinist colonial past by centring the experiences of the “Zambrano carers”: predominantly single Black mothers left destitute by the UK government, and Black and Brown Muslim women who have borne the brunt of Islamophobic violence. In the final section I look to Hagar in Delores Williams's Sisters in the Wilderness to theologise Brexit with these women who are marginalised and dehumanised in contemporary British society.

Working-class Girl, Feminist Historian, Collective Solidarities

By turns intimate, scholarly, and political, this reflection of a working-class historian (by birth as well as choice) and feminist scholar of women, gender, and migration highlights the life experiences, intellectual awakenings, and contemporary historical developments that have informed her evolving scholarship. While acknowledging individual achievement, the emphasis is on how collaboration with a life partner/historian, colleagues, students, and activists, as well as “collective solidarities,” have significantly shaped and enriched her career.

On Listening, Talking, and Silence

Elisabeth Subrin’s Maria Schneider, 1983 (2022) and Pratibha Parmar’s My Name Is Andrea (2022) both use reenactment to reflect on their subjects (Maria Schneider and Andrea Dworkin), women whose artistic and political lives were highjacked by sexual assault. Subrin and Parmar deploy performance in unconventional ways, casting multiple actresses from diverse backgrounds, experimenting with temporal layering, and drawing on unconventional audiovisual archives. There is a core tension, in both projects, between the particularities of embodied experience and the pervasive narratives of violence, trauma, and misogyny that repeat across time. Yet these works use reenactment to reach markedly different conclusions about identity, history, and artistic praxis. Equally striking are the interventions each film makes into feminist history, fashioning explicit and distinct connections between the legacies of the women they depict and a fractious political present.

Feminism Explored in Joan Barfoot's Abra: An Analysis

This paper analyses the feminist elements present in the novel Abra authored by Joan Barfoot, a Canadian feminist writer of the second wave feminism era in the 1960s and 1970s. The period impacted many social changes including civil rights for women, and secured power in the hands of women. The novel Abra captures the significance of the period through an empowered female protagonist who renounced her family and society to gain autonomy. Moreover, the novel offers insights into the struggles of women as well as their established power in a world dominated by men. Hence, this article aims to examine the feminist themes in the novel and analyses how the novel depicts the treatment of women in the Canadian patriarchal society. Further, the paper focuses on the protagonist's psychological transformation from an ordinary woman to an empowered individual who defies patriarchal domination, while exploring the period’s spirit of quest for freedom.

Making “Women's News”: French Feminists of la Femme nouvelle (1934–36) and the Newsreel Magazine Actualités féminines

Abstract This article demonstrates how the interwar French suffragist organization la Femme nouvelle used the platform of the newsreel to make political claims through its collaboration with Pathé’s newsreel magazine Actualités féminines or Women's News. Through the filming of their political actions and educational segments edited together in their newsreel compilation film, Le film de la Femme nouvelle (dir. la Femme nouvelle, France, 1935), the suffragists, led by Louise Weiss, frame themselves as essential workers, fearless political actors, and perfect housewives. These contradictions reveal a strategic manipulation of their gender identity to obtain the vote at all costs. Newsreel making provided the feminists an avenue for political claimsmaking beyond electoral politics. These filmed accounts of their actions give the spectator a sense of being present at the event, which is missing from written accounts of la Femme nouvelle's history. Through this aesthetic liveness, achieved through camera placement and staging in crowd scenes, the suffragists were able to portray themselves as vital political actors. One such filmed protest from 12 May 1935 provides a compelling account of their filmmaking practice, in which the activists march on la place de la Bastille in chains, then break their chains and put them in a bonfire. The French Revolution, referenced by this action, was a popular analogy for the Left, as seen in the film La marseillaise (dir. Jean Renoir, France, 1937). Le film de la Femme nouvelle is significant because it allows for an alternate, feminist history of political filmmaking in the period.

Phyllis Schlafly and the Anti-ERA Movement Through an Evaluation of the Media’s Portrayal of Women

This paper discusses the correlation between anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and her language in the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) debate and the 1950s media portrayal of women. Schlafly claims anti-feminists were the victims of media representation; she asserts in her December 1979 edition of the Phyllis Schlafly Report, “not a single magazine published an article against ERA -- or even gave equal space to the arguments pro and con.” While this paper did not research coverage of the ERA debate in the media, I did investigate how preceding media shaped Phyllis Schlafly’s advocacy using an inductive thematic content analysis. In her assertion that the anti-feminists were victims of biased media, Schlafly does not consider how the media supported her argument. In this study, I reflected on the media portrayal of women before the ERA debate and the mobilization of Second Wave Feminism by evaluating advertisements in Life Magazine and The Ladies Home Journal. I hypothesized that the depiction of women in 1950s media directly influenced Schlafly’s advocacy and her view of women’s roles, which aided in the success of her advocacy. This paper discusses how the advertisements laid a foundation to support Schlafly’s claim that women do not want/need constitutional equality with men. The findings of this study indicate the consequences of stereotypical media portrayals and their ability to dictate political and social debates, especially in terms of the repercussions of the depiction of the 1950s housewife.

Emili Du Châtelet – on Matter

This paper draws on Emily du Châtelet, an early 18th Century philosopher’s life and work to reflect on posthuman feminist theory’s redefinition of the historical feminist project away from emancipatory, dialectical epistemologies in relation to science. In her 1740 published book, Institution de Physics (Foundations of Physics), du Châtelet, in an enlightenment fashion turns to empiricism in an attempt to explain the physical world and specifically bodily agency. It is empiricism that leads her to critic both the Cartesians as well as the Newtonians disembodied account of force. Turning to Leibniz’s metaphysics, du Châtelet critiques Newton’s theory of bodies and gravity and in its place suggests a vital, agential approach to matter. Having an insight into her intellectual world at the dawn of enlightenment renders the lacuna of our scientific paradigm to account for bodies as a nonlogical one and affirms technoscience/ posthuman feminist transformative project.

Visual Analysis of the Selected Scenes of the Movie The Avengers

The paper is about the visual critical discourse analysis of the selected scenes from the Avengers (2012) movie. The current paper analyses the female character "Natasha" from different perspectives. The researchers have selected feminist theory (second wave of feminism) while the model of Philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1931-58) has been taken for analyzing the selected scenes of the movie. Peirce's model consists of compositional analysis, semiotic analysis, and visual critical discourse analysis. Different signs and discourses have been used in the movie, which has been clarified by the model that what messages have been delivered by the film producer. It has resulted in the paper that different roles have been played by the female character Natasha in the movie. She fought bravely against the Sphinx forces and equally participated with men in every field of life.

Display of Third Wave Feminism in Chungking Express: A Chinese Film Review

Display of Third Wave Feminism in Chungking Express: A Chinese Film Review

Expecting Advice: Reproductive Health and Consciousness Raising in the Boston Globe’s Confidential Chat Column

ABSTRACT This article explores consciousness raising in the Boston Globe’s Confidential Chat column, documenting how, during the second wave of feminism, it became a venue where women educated themselves about reproductive health. The Chat’s nonhierarchical, participatory nature allowed women to discuss abortion, contraception, infertility, and related topics during a time when the role of women in society was undergoing profound change. Boston’s deep Catholic roots added complexities to these discussions. The findings provide historical context for modern social media discourse around reproductive choice.

Between the classroom and the marketplace

This paper discusses the value of non-traditional forms of knowledge production, through an exploration of Nigeria’s feminist history and the Abeokuta Women’s Union.

Feminist histories of costuming film: Gordon Conway, 1930s British cinema and the collaborative world of Mayfair sewing

Feminist histories of costuming film: Gordon Conway, 1930s British cinema and the collaborative world of Mayfair sewing

Voices of women in the global south: Tricontinental magazine and the new feminist narrative (1967-2018)

ABSTRACT This article examines how the emergence of new subaltern subjects, imbued with revolutionary ideals like anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, within the framework of the second wave of feminism, deepened the breach in the monolithic, homogenising model of femaleness constructed around a base with deeply Eurocentric roots. Tricontinental magazine, a groundbreaking publication in the dissemination of new feminist realities associated with the alternative experiences of women in Asia, Africa and Latin America, provided a space for the women of the Global South to raise their voices and demand new divergent identities and discourses. The visibility of female authors and the recognition of the many women’s organisations that joined forces with Tricontinental magazine brings to light a new account of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist feminisms as movements of social transformation in the context of the Global South. Although the alter-globalisation narratives contained in numerous manifestos, testimonies and publications authored by a plethora of women have received little or no recognition in the feminist historiography to date, they represent a complex pioneering framework that served as a platform for transnational cultural exchange in the context of the ideological and political polarisation of the Cold War.

Feminist waves, global activism, and gender violence regimes: Genealogy and impact of a global wave

Global waves of activism are powerful social forces shaping - and shaped by- policy and politics worldwide. Such waves are constituted not by a single movement or campaign but rather comprise national, local and transnational organizations and networks of activists. We lack the conceptual underpinnings necessary to fully capture the impact of such a diffuse and complex phenomenon. This prevents scholars from fully grasping the ways that waves shape and are shaped by national and transnational campaigns and their interactions, the ways that core ideas become embedded in national and international institutions, and the ways that core ideas develop and change. In this paper, we propose understanding global feminism as a global wave as a way to develop some insight into these processes.We elaborate this concept and give a brief overview of the development of the global feminist wave, showing the ways that transnational networks serve as mechanisms for linking activists to global governance and also to activists in other countries, strengthening global civil society. These organizational forms contribute to the development of global feminism, a set of ideas that motivate action and become embedded in an evolving set of international norms. Though global feminism is sometimes associated with a particular set of ideas from second wave feminism of the 1960s and 70s, we argue that it has its roots in the abolitionist and suffrage movements of the late 1800s.The roots of global feminism in the struggles of racialized and colonized women illuminates its potential as a source for gender justice today.We sketch the way that the global feminist wave interacts with different kinds of regimes, showing how domestic regimes and global norms evolve together focussing on the issue of gender-based violence against women. We suggest that different regime types channel waves differently, with neoliberal regimes paradoxically producing more openness to global waves while social democratic regimes- particularly those with weak civil society- channel waves through established institutional channels. A stronger connection to global civil could advance gender justice for intersectionally-marginalized women. We illustrate this argument with a brief application to Canada.

Julia Wedgwood, a Victorian feminist and female intellectual. Who was she and why has she been forgotten?

ABSTRACT Julia Wedgwood (1833–1913) was a non-fiction writer who chose an unusually wide range of subjects, including theology, the Classical world and German Biblical criticism. She was also a leading feminist who wrote several influential pieces on female enfranchisement, campaigned in the 1870 elections to the London School Board and taught informally at what became Girton College. She was the niece of Charles Darwin, the great scientist, and had a short but intense relationship with Robert Browning, the poet. She was also close to many other leading Victorian cultural figures. Yet her achievements as a writer are now largely forgotten as is her role as a feminist. This article re-examines her life and career before considering why she has fallen out of the record and what that suggests about the influence of misleading stereotypes in our approach to nineteenth century women’s non-fiction writing and the study of first wave feminism.

Book Review: Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

REVIEWED BOOK: LEWIS, H.: Problémové ženy. Dejiny feminizmu v 11 bojoch. [Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights]. N Press, s. r. o. Bratislava, 2021. 374 s. ISBN 9788082300249.

A Prosthetic Popular Feminism in Postfeminist Times: Mrs. America’s Cool Feminism and Antifeminist Celebrity

In the conclusion to her study of feminist history in popular culture, Dana Heller calls for feminists “to seize aggressively onto and restock the cultural memory banks” to counter a historical amnesia and a retrograde historical revisionism bedeviling feminism in popular memory. The recent Emmy-nominated television drama Mrs. America is an attempt to do this restocking in culturally hospitable, but politically difficult, times. Mrs. America offers a new televisual rendering of American second-wave feminist history, refracted through the women who mobilized for and against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and one woman in particular: Phyllis Schlafly. This article argues that Mrs. America mobilizes two key and entwined idioms of postfeminist culture, cool and celebrity, to construct a language of second-wave feminist remembrance attractive to, and legible for, a postfeminist audience. This produces a prosthetic memory, enabling a feminist remembrance and therefore a critical historical consciousness for contemporary neoconservative times. Mrs. America dramatizes what happens when antifeminist forces are ignored and/or underestimated—too uncool to be a threat—and younger women viewers are urged to take this history into account, thereby associating the then of the ERA with the now of a United States shaped by Donald Trump. This occurs through the series’s organizing principle of parallelisms—whether in editing techniques, narratives, or imagery—that bring together and into relief the uncanny similarities as well as the differences between feminist and antifeminist forces, then and now.

“How Not to Get Killed”: Feminist Aftercare in the Dorothy Allison Papers

Born from a deep dive into Dorothy Allison’s published works and personal papers, this article proposes a praxis of perverting the archives to make room for promiscuous readings that emerge from the unpredictable confluence of pleasure and danger in archival research. I argue that perverted readings can serve as an imperative form of aftercare (to borrow from S/M terminology) that opens up multiple pathways for excavating the webs of care that arose during the lesbian/feminist sex wars. Allison and her work with S/M communities convey a sexual politics rooted in reflexivity, critique, and a lesbian feminist framework of collective care for women’s sexual realties. Moreover, I argue that narrating histories of the sex wars through the lenses of care work and erotic labor creates more possibilities for holding together the diverse perspectives that constituted these debates, which tend to be glossed in popular accounts of feminist histories as dichotomous or otherwise at odds with each other.