Feminist Identity Research Articles

Exploring Feminist Perspectives: The Discourse on Childbirth and Motherhood in Internet Media Platforms

This study delves into the evolving landscape of feminist discourse among young Chinese women, as manifested on Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), a prominent social media platform in China. Through a qualitative analysis of user-generated content, the research uncovers key themes that reflect the contemporary state of feminist thought and its intersection with the unique socio-cultural dynamics of modern China. These themes include reclaiming autonomy in childbirth, the critical role of economic autonomy as a feminist imperative, the complex interplay between economic independence and feminist ideals, and the reconceptualization of motherhood within traditional and contemporary narratives. The study reveals a nuanced tapestry of perspectives, highlighting the progress and challenges in the feminist movement, the evolving understanding of women’s roles and identities, and the unique blend of global feminist ideologies with local cultural contexts. This research contributes to the broader discourse on feminism, offering insights into the diverse and dynamic ways young Chinese women engage with and shape feminist thought in the digital age.

“I Am A Feminist, But . . .” Practicing Quiet Feminism in the Era of Everyday Backlash in South Korea

In this study, we investigate the practice of feminism among young South Korean women in the era of backlash. Drawing on interviews with 40 female college students in South Korea, we found that most of the participants self-identify as feminists who engage in feminist activities primarily in private offline settings on their college campuses. To understand this phenomenon of quiet feminism, which contradicts the global trend of postfeminist attitudes and online feminism, we link the students’ offline practice of everyday feminism with what we term everyday backlash. Our findings reveal that these young women have encountered widespread antifeminist sentiments in both online and offline everyday contexts since the rapid popularization of feminism in South Korea in the late 2010s. We argue that this pervasive everyday backlash not only motivates the students to create safe spaces within their college campuses but also discourages them from publicly disclosing their feminist identities. Through this research, we contribute to the literature on contemporary feminist practice and its relationship with backlash by offering a nuanced understanding of the local context in South Korea.

Translating Global Environmental Constitutionalism in the Indonesian Context: Pancasila vs. Liberalism

The translation of global environmental constitutionalism into local contexts presents a complex interplay between universal principles and indigenous values. This paper investigates this dynamic within the Indonesian context, juxtaposing the principles of Pancasila, the state ideology, with liberal environmental constitutionalism. While global environmental constitutionalism emphasizes individual rights, liberal democracy, and market mechanisms, Pancasila is rooted in collective welfare, harmony, and indigenous cultural values. The analysis begins by delineating the core tenets of liberal environmental constitutionalism, highlighting its focus on individual rights to environmental protection and the centrality of democratic governance. It then contrasts these principles with the philosophical underpinnings of Pancasila, which prioritize collective well-being, socio-cultural harmony, and state intervention for sustainable development. Furthermore, the paper examines the implications of translating liberal environmental constitutionalism into the Indonesian context. It identifies potential points of convergence and divergence between liberal ideals and Pancasila-based governance structures. Challenges such as reconciling individual rights with collective welfare, integrating indigenous knowledge into environmental policymaking, and navigating the tensions between state intervention and market mechanisms are discussed. Through this analysis, the paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on global environmental constitutionalism by emphasizing the importance of contextual adaptation. It underscores the need for flexible frameworks that accommodate diverse cultural, political, and economic realities. Ultimately, it argues for a nuanced approach that recognizes the value of both universal principles and indigenous wisdom in shaping effective environmental governance systems within specific national contexts.

A counselor and an artist: John Steinbeck’s dialogue with Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam war

ABSTRACT This article explores the dialogue that unfolded between the noted American novelist John Steinbeck (1902–1968) and President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973) during the 1960s. In an era in which many American writers and intellectuals loudly protested Johnson for escalating the Vietnam War, Steinbeck stood out as a writer who supported the president’s domestic policies on civil rights as well as his foreign policy in Southeast Asia. Drawing on archival documents held in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and the Library of Congress, the article explores how Steinbeck’s years-long dialogue with Johnson linked liberal ideals for literature and government that are more often held apart in studies of Cold War America. Ultimately, this approach reveals that the unusual bond that formed between novelist and president articulated a measure of the complexity of Cold War American liberalism itself, which in the 1960s promoted the noble cause of civil rights at home while at the same time justifying disastrous military interventions against communism in the name of “freedom” abroad.

Development and validation of the Multidimensional Gender Inequality Perception Scale (MuGIPS).

Perceptions of gender inequality may motivate people to take action against inequality given its negative impact on various domains of people's everyday lives. Thus, it is crucial to develop reliable measures that consider the multidimensional nature of gender inequalities. In this research, we propose and assess the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Gender Inequality Perception Scale (MuGIPS). This is a self-reported measure of perceived gender inequality in four domains: health, violence, household work and caregiving, and public sphere and power. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test the validity and reliability of the MuGIPS with Spanish participants in three samples (N = 1733). The analyses revealed that the MuGIPS had a good internal consistency and showed four factors associated with gender inequality in the four specified domains. Moreover, scores in all the dimensions positively correlated with feminist identity and feminist ideology, as much as with some attitudinal variables. In contrast, results showed a negative correlation with system-justifying ideologies. The MuGIPS shows adequate reliability and validity for measuring the perception of gender inequality in the health, violence, household work and caregiving, and public sphere and power domains among Spanish university and general population samples.

The Concept of Feminism within the Specificity of African Philosophy

This paper explores the evolution and impact of African feminist theories within the historical and socio-cultural context of the continent. It delves into pre-colonial gender roles, illustrating the significant influence and authority women held in various African societies, such as the Akan and Igbo communities. The study examines the disruption of these roles by colonialism, which imposed Western patriarchal structures and marginalised women’s economic and political participation. Post-colonial developments highlight the emergence of feminist movements that strive to address these historical injustices and advocate for gender equality. Indigenous feminist theories such as Motherism, Stiwanism, and Ubuntu Feminism are emphasised, showcasing their unique approaches that blend traditional African values with contemporary feminist ideals. These theories and movements provide a nuanced understanding of gender dynamics, advocating for reforms that resonate with African cultural contexts while addressing modern challenges such as economic disenfranchisement, access to education, and gender-based violence. The paper underscores the importance of integrating indigenous knowledge systems with feminist principles to achieve a more inclusive and equitable society.

The Use of Figurative Language in Feminist Songs

Songs employ figurative language to convey messages, capturing listeners’ attention with captivating melodies. Listeners generate several interpretations by depending on personal observations to infer intended meanings in different settings. The primary objective of this research is to identify figurative language in Taylor Swift’s feminist songs: ‘The Man,’ ‘long story short,’ and ‘I Did Something Bad.’ The framework applied in this research is based on Perrine’s (1977) theory of figurative language. The data analysis procedure is based on Alan Bryman’s (2012) four phases of analysis. This research demonstrates that feminist principles can be effectively expressed through music, utilising figurative language as a compelling instrument for communicating feminism in musical compositions. Singers can use figurative language to advocate for and reinforce shared feminist beliefs while constructing a bridge of connection and a beautiful symphony. Lyrics enhanced by figurative language, successfully deliver feminist ideals, making them a powerful means for women to empower themselves through listening to feminist music.

‘Caring’ Through Translation: A Dialogue on Ethics and Inclusivity in Cross-Language Research

Cross-language research involving translation is prevalent in the social sciences yet under-discussed in terms of its ethical impact on participants or the translator her/himself. This paper applies a feminist ethics of ‘care’ to the topic of translation in cross-cultural, cross-language research. We argue for the importance of emotional intelligence and awareness of emotional labor involved in meaningful, ethical translation between the researcher, translator, and participants. The paper itself is a reflexive conversation between a translator and researcher following six months of data collection involving over 120 interviews and 10 work-life histories. We discuss the opportunities and limitations for more emotionally evolved translation in cross-cultural research, discussing specific strategies for caring about, taking care of, caregiving and care receiving through translation. Applying the ‘caring through translation’ framework promotes deeper collaboration and relationality between researchers, translators, and participants, grounded in feminist ideals of equitable, ethical knowledge production.

Feminists, popular feminists, and transfeminists: young Argentine activists define their own identities

ABSTRACT From Iran to Uruguay, young feminist activists have taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers demanding changes to the gender status quo and its intersections with a host of oppressive social and economic hierarchies. This study addresses a foundational aspect of the upsurge of young feminist mass mobilization: feminist identity itself. To understand the feminism of this highly motivated younger generation, we ground our explorations in the lived experience of young Argentine feminists. We employ a mixed-method approach based on 31 in-depth qualitative interviews to ask: What do they consider to be the fundamental dimensions of their feminist identity? And what have been their pathways to feminism? Their interviews reveal three distinct identities, namely, feminists, popular feminists, and transfeminists, each one feeding into their intersectional and collective orientation, as well as different pathways for feminist becoming. Because of its global relevance and regional contagion effect, an analysis based on Argentina promises key theoretical insights about how youth around the world construct new meanings of who the feminist subject is and, by extension, what feminism as a movement entails.

The Effect of Femvertising on Consumer Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions: Moderating Role of Feminist Identity

Femvertising uygulamaları 1990’lı yıllardan bu yana pazarlama ve reklamcılıkta artan bir şekilde kullanılmakla birlikte son yıllarda bu uygulamaların özgünlüğü sorgulanır olmuştur. Bu çalışma femvertising uygulamalarında samimiyetin bir göstergesi olan marka-amaç uyumunun satın alma ve yönlendirme niyetleri üzerindeki etkilerini reklama yönelik tutum üzerinden incelemektedir. Bu süreçte sosyal kimliğin (kendini feminist tanımlama) düzenleyici etkileri de değerlendirilmiştir. Çalışma için geliştirilen modeli test etmek için 232 katılımcıdan anket aracılığı ile çevrimiçi ortamda veri toplanmıştır. Elde edilen bulgular marka-amaç uyumunun reklama yönelik tutumu belirlemede önemli bir faktör olduğunu, reklama yönelik tutumun da satın alma ve paylaşma niyeti üzerinde anlamlı ve olumlu yönde etkisi olduğunu göstermiştir. Ayrıca, bulgular paylaşma niyetinin reklama yönelik tutum yanında satın alma niyetinden de etkilendiğini ve sosyal kimliğin bu süreçte düzenleyici rol oynadığını göstermektedir. Araştırmadan elde edilen sonuçların literatüre katkıları tartışılmıştır.

Mother-Child Relationship in Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove: A Fragile Landscape

British-Jordanian novelist Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove is a story of an Arabian girl from a Bedouin tribe in the Levant, who is punished by death for flouting social norms of the tribe. Her tribe believed that dishonour can only be wiped off with blood. Apart from a covert advocacy of feminist ideals and women’s emancipation, the novel offers a window to the strong mother-daughter relationship, which in itself is viewed by prominent feminist critics as a form of rejection of patriarchal oppression. In the present paper, mother-child relationship depicted in the novel has been explored through a character analysis of the leading as well as minor female roles in the book, such as the protagonist Salma, her mother Hajjeh Amina, and her friend Noura and Madam Lamaa. The study concludes that in the novel mothers are depicted to forge a strong relationship with their children, especially daughters, in a continuum of motherline.

Pisarstwo historyczne w służbie polityki. Przemiany społeczno-polityczne XIX stulecia w Europie Zachodniej z perspektywy twórczości krakowskiego konserwatysty Henryka Lisickiego (1839–1899)

The article presents the views of Henryk Lisicki, a publicist and historian, actively cooperating with Krakow’s conservatives (Stańczycy). It focuses on the issue presented in his literature (and representative of his native environment), of the attitude of conservatives toward the nineteenth-century democratization processes. In his views, he revealed criticism of the legacy of the Great French Revolution of 1789. However, the article indicates that in his works Lisicki did this from a moderately conservative position. As a result, he argued for the possibility of adapting the deposit of „traditional values” resulting from the natural law to the reality forming in the Old Continent, under the influence of changes caused by the aforementioned revolution. The article also signals the political construct preferred by moderate conservatives (which is an alternative to the personal rule of a ruler or republic), in the form of a constitutional monarchy, which was exemplified by Victorian England. The text also points to representative elements of the moderately conservative worldview, which is a reception of conservative and liberal ideals.

What toleration is not

ABSTRACT Following Andrew Jason Cohen, Lucia Rafanelli construes toleration to consist in not merely limiting one’s interference with others’ behaviour, but doing so because of a principled commitment to respecting others’ independent choices. I argue that this conflates toleration with distinctly liberal ideals such as freedom of conscience or autonomy. This conflation not only impoverishes our conceptual vocabulary by using ‘toleration’ to label concepts or phenomena for which there are already perfectly good words, it also renders non-liberal conceptions or theories of toleration nonsensical by definitional fiat. This in turn risks making the historical emergence of theories and practices of toleration on purely prudential grounds – namely, reasons of state – unintelligible. Even though this does not, I think, compromise Rafanelli’s substantive normative conclusions about interference, it does raise important questions about the proper relation between contemporary political theory and the history of political thought.

UK higher education sector's response to the war in Ukraine

PurposeThis article aims to address the response from the higher education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom (UK) to the full-scale war in Ukraine which started in 2022.Design/methodology/approachRelying on theoretical ideas of neoliberalism and the collection and thematic analysis of relevant official communications from six UK universities, the article uncovers three major ways in which these universities have been responding to the war.FindingsThey include (1) altruistic responses, (2) the promotion of equal treatment of all people and (3) the condemnation of the invasion and its implications for UK’s international cooperation in HE. These responses suggest the strengthening of the liberal ideals in the UK HE sector, heavily dominated by marketisation.Originality/valueThis analysis is significant not only for advancing a very limited scholarship on the topic of HE in the context of this war but also for understanding the development of the neoliberal landscape of UK HE and neoliberalism as a phenomenon in times of crises.

Doing feminism through Chinese online fiction fandom

To explore the connections between Chinese online fiction fandom and feminism, in-depth interviews were conducted with thirty-two Chinese women and nonbinary fans of online fiction. Online fiction fandom is both a counterpublic and an intimate public in which women and nonbinary fans are connected by a common interest, their feminist identities are formed through or emerge through participation in such a public, and their shared values and understanding of feminism create a closer sense of belonging and affective solidarity. Engaging with feminism through online fiction is a form of digital feminism, creating feminist consciousness among online fiction fans through literary and discursive constructs. Women-oriented online fiction has become a space for many young Chinese women and nonbinary people to criticize and challenge patriarchal gender norms and reflect on mainstream gender relations. This space continues to produce educational cultural resources that make feminist learning and practice a work in progress.

Has feminism “gone too far?” A mixed-methods exploration of perceptions of digital feminist activism

ABSTRACT This study is the first to take a social psychological approach to understanding willingness to engage with digital feminist activism (DFA), providing the necessary context scholars need to explore and offer suggestions to promote engagement with digital feminist movements. In this mixed-methods study, a convenience sample of adult men and women who use social media in the U.S. (n = 705, 19–83 years old) were recruited for participation in a digital survey. Volunteers from this sample (n = 15, 23–66 years old) subsequently participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews via Zoom. Quantitative insights indicate higher support for feminism and higher feminist-identifying social networks are associated with personal feminist identification. Higher personal feminist identification and feminine gender identity (among both men and women) are associated with willingness to participate in DFA. Qualitative insights deepen these findings, exploring the complexity of understandings of feminism, conceptualizations of “feminism” and “feminists,” gender identities, and social network pressure that may contribute to avoidance of digital feminist [and other social] activism.

Feminism against Progress

Feminism against Progress

At Least She Is Doing Something? Women Do Not Prefer a Woman Who Confronts Gender-Based Discrimination With a Distancing Motive Over a Nonconfronter

We examined how female (and male) observers evaluated a woman who confronts gender-based discrimination expressing a distancing motive (distance oneself from other women) compared to different types of nondistancing motives. We were interested in the distancing motive, because it has ambivalent implications for women (opposition to discrimination and potential for prejudice reduction vs. disparaging women). In three preregistered online vignette experiments ( N1 = 404 women and men; N2 = 295 women, N3 = 742 women and men; with men as control groups), participants evaluated a female professional who confronted gender-based discrimination, implying either an individual motive (improve individual situation), a group motive (improve women's group status), or a distancing motive, all compared to a condition where the woman did not confront at all. Although women perceived distancing-motivated confrontation as more effective and beneficial for women than no confrontation, they evaluated the distancing-motivated confronter equally negatively as the nonconfronter. Furthermore, effects of gender group (Studies 1 and 2) and feminist identification (Studies 2 and 3) and comparing women's to men's evaluations (Studies 1 and 3) overall indicate that the confrontation motives’ implications (e.g., devaluation of women) for people's identities (e.g., feminist women vs. feminist men) shape the evaluation of a confronter. These results encourage those who have contact with targets of gender-based discrimination to reflect on how their own identity may influence their reaction toward the target.

The Democratic Majority and the 2016 American Presidential Election: Feminist Political Behavior Across Multiple Axes of Identity

Scholarship on women voters using an intersectional lens has shown feminists and women of color within the Democratic Party to be a powerful force in electoral politics—specifically, Black and Latina women—are the most reliable voters. Combined, they represent the majority of women voters in the Democratic Party, and they have shown themselves to be a sizeable voting bloc in the last two American presidential election cycles. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES), we demonstrate important differences in support for the Democratic candidate (Hillary Clinton) between feminists and women of color—Black and Latina—underscoring the need to study gender, race, and ethnicity simultaneously (versus independently) when they are co-constitutive identity categories. By examining women and the groups the Clinton campaign appealed most to—feminists, Black, and Latina women—we add to the scholarship in political science that followed this unique election and demonstrate the importance of feminist identity for vote choice and various modes of political behavior for women voters. Knowing and understanding how women respond through affect and how this affect can result in political behaviors will help determine what it takes for future historic first candidates to emerge successful.

A feminism of the soul? Postfeminism, postsecular feminism and contemporary feminine spiritualities

Increasingly popular ‘feminine spiritualities’ urge women to foster personal transformation and social change through spiritual empowerment and healing of ‘the feminine’. However, in spite of feminist undertones, feminism is rarely explicitly evoked, and is often even rejected. Gender scholars have debated over the ambivalent feminism of contemporary spiritualities, which are readily seen as closer to postfeminist rather than feminist ideals, or framed as a form of old-fashioned cultural feminism. While some recent analyses do explore the feminist potential of feminine spiritualities in more positive terms, the debates often lack practitioner perspectives on feminism and deeper considerations of the practitioners’ own self-definitions. Based on ethnographic interview material across Finnish and Anglo-American contexts, this article explores how adherents of feminine spirituality imagine feminism, and whether they consider their spirituality to be feminist or not and why. I argue that while practitioners hold varying, often ambiguous positions in relation to feminism, the narratives iterate shared themes that render feminism and feminine spirituality as incompatible: an emphasis on femininity over feminism, and a focus on spirituality instead of politics. Furthermore, practitioners critique mainstream feminism for being too secular, while often simultaneously agreeing with feminist criticisms of both cultural feminist and postfeminist ideals. I suggest that failing to take the voices of spiritual women into account prevents constructive dialogue and solidarity among secular and spiritual feminists as well as non-feminist women, and offers little room for emerging postsecular feminist identities.