Patriarchal Hegemony Research Articles

Social media discourses of Nigerian social affairs: a critical appraisal of YouTube vloggers’ panacea hypotheses for national recovery

ABSTRACT Different strata of Nigerian society including social media vlogs have been discussing the ills plaguing Nigeria. Such social ills include debt burden, flooding linked to Cameroon’s Lagdo Dam, food crisis resulting from border closure, and insecurity following government’s Visa on Arrival policy. Many suggestions have been offered as solutions. The study considers the perspectives of both Diaspora and local vloggers across gender and ages. Guided by Nancy Fraser’s subaltern counter-publics theoretical principle and Hollis Chenery’s theory of Structural Change, this paper evaluates YouTube discourses on Nigeria with a view to interpreting the vloggers’ hypotheses and the local factors militating against the vloggers’ viewpoints. Some of the panaceas recommended by the vloggers include no-debt pardoning, jettisoning project abandonment culture, voting on competence rather than ethnic affiliation, and emulation of the United States and Germany on ethnic unification. Other recommendations include oil theft blockage, reversal of the Visa on Arrival policy, self-determination, and inclusion of women in curbing food crisis. This study raises the consciousness of the Nigerian citizens on the country’s socio-political development roadmap enabled by the ubiquitous nature of social media. The study concludes that institutionalized corruption, leadership ineptitude, nepotism, and patriarchal hegemony hamper the actualization of the vloggers’ viewpoints.

Masculinity: Phallogocentrism and Performativity. A Philosophical Analysis Based on the Studies of Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler and Raewyn Connell to Counter Patriarchal Hegemony

Feminist considerations have induced a rethinking of many aspects of our contemporary world, such as the concept of gender and power relations. This has led to a re-examination of the entire previous tradition of thought, finding in phallogocentrism the paradigm of reference. This term indicates, starting with Derrida's considerations, the Western tendency to have centred not only the logos, but also the phallus, weaving an intricate relationship between masculinity and language. It's precisely this bond that makes man the archetype on which society is founded, placing his supremacy in the natural order, defining power relations and nailing pre-established categories. A being-nailed in the Lévinasian sense, thus an adherence between the agreement of voices and being, which produces 'category-beings' in which pre-delineated social identity is concealed in a condition of 'nature', such as the 'being-male'. It's precisely this naturalness, discursively produced, that has made man universal. Consequently, man has convinced himself that he can speak for all humanity, becoming the logos through which he declines the rest. Declinations that have produced rigid and hierarchical categories that precede and define each person, prescribing 'consonant' ways, rhetorically assumed as 'human nature'. The "nature" of being man or woman does not, in fact, concern monolithic essentialisms, but rather movements of intertwined meanings in a process that Derrida defines as différance. A process, therefore, in becoming, which has over time produced unequal power relations, justifying them as "natural", and which daily reiterates a hegemonic and sexist social model. The aim of this analysis, hence, will be to bring phallogocentric masculinity and consequent hegemonic structures into the field of philosophical reflection, with the purpose of redirecting praxis towards performative processes of characterisation the person, rather than a pre-delineated categorisation. Thus, to release being from socio-cultural categories, which historical-performative praxis nails to each body.

An examination of cyberbullying among Zimbabwean female social media influencers

With technology and online interactions increasingly shaping our lives, there is a need to comprehend how cyberbullying affects individuals in online spaces. The predominant focus of cyberbullying studies has been on students, yet this scourge affects all groups of people, including social media influencers. There is a knowledge gap in how cyberbullying affects social media influencers. The study borrows from cyberfeminism concept to examine forms of cyberbullying among Zimbabwean social media influencers. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse posts which were purposively extracted from three social media influences’ pages, namely, Ketty Masomera, Queen of Peace and Patricia Jack. The extracted posts were published between May 2023 and June 2024. The analysis reveals that the main forms of cyberbullying among the selected social media influencers are denigration, sexting, and flaming. The article argues that female social media influencers have become perpetrators of cyberbullying and toxicity and use their Facebook pages to reproduce patriarchal hegemony as demonstrated by consistent harassment of fellow female social media influencers. The study concludes that although the dominant literature portrays women as victims of cyberbullying from men, they are also perpetrators of bullying online, and this bullying happens to be directed at fellow women.

Voice of women's freedom: Women’s perspective through movie Before, Now & Then (2022)

<p><em>The movie Before, Now & Then (2022) raises the theme of Nana's life history as she breaks away from patriarchal hegemony through women's perspectives. Inspired by director Kamila Andini's anxiety about the role of women in movies, she invites the audience to experience the story from a woman's perspective. This study aims to analyze the voice of women's freedom from the female gaze through the movie Before, Now & Then (2022) using Baudrillrad's simulacra method and a postcolonial perspective. This approach seeks to uncover the colonialism practices behind the movie as a superstructure of power, providing a basis for analyzing the movie. The main female character is portrayed as someone who speaks little but takes decisive action to liberate herself from patriarchy by using women's language and point of view. The movie’s storyline focuses more on the life story of Nana to escape from the patriarchal restraints inherent in people's lives, especially since the movie's storyline was in the post-ideological war West Java in 1960. The study concludes that this movie can depict women’s perspectives through its characterization and storyline.<br /><br /></em><em></em></p>

Internalized Misogyny: A Transnational Exploration of Select Literary Narratives

Patriarchy is a pervasive global phenomenon, that creates social, cultural and political disparities and perpetuates gender inequality, discrimination and bias. It is deeply embedded in various discourses of human civilization, operating through both identifiable and unidentifiable mechanisms. Internalized misogyny, many a time is a subtle apparatus that manifests and maintains patriarchy and gender inequality. Identifying internalized misogyny is a complex task owing to the fact that its practices are often legitimized and internalized by women, thus making it unrecognized. Periodically, when overt structures of patriarchal hegemonies are criticized, the covert means of hegemonic functioning, particularly internalized misogyny remains underrepresented and uncritiqued. Thus, addressing the problem of internalized misogyny is the need of the hour. This study adopts two literary narratives namely, The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan and Idris: Keeper of the Light by Anita Nair for the ongoing discussion on internalized misogyny. The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan inquire into multigenerational reverberations of internalized misogyny, through the traction of mothers and daughters impelling Chinese traditions and gender roles upon themselves and other women around them. Idris: Keeper of the Light by Anita Nair clasps the reader’s attention towards 17th Century India and how the female characters grapples with societal norms that incarcerate them into subservient roles. Hence, this proposed paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the select works to identify and examine the discourse of internalized misogyny, that perpetuates gender inequality. By scrutinizing both works, this paper divulges into the omnipresent nature of internalized misogyny irrespective of contrasting historical and cultural contexts.

PATRIARCHAL ERASURE AND MANUFACTURED PASSIVITY: ASYMMETRIC GOVERNMENT AND NEWS MEDIA ATTENTION TO PROTESTS IN CHINA

Is media attention to protest events gendered, and what is the relationship between gender, media, and protest? Using novel big data from Chinese social media, Weibo, spanning 2010-2017, this study offers the first systematic analysis of gender bias in media selection and description of protests in China and establishes the “gender-protest-media triad.” In accounting for this gender bias, we distinguish between two types of media accounts on Weibo: government and news media outlets. The results indicate that women-majority protests, despite being more violent and risky, are less likely than men-majority protests to receive coverage in both government and news media outlets (media selection bias). Furthermore, when reporting on women-majority protests, government media sources tend to describe them as more passive than men-majority protests (media description bias). Our research establishes the “gender-protest-media triad”: (1) Women participate violently in protests as a reactive response to exploitation and marginalization; (2) Women's protests are disproportionately underreported and misrepresented in the media; (3) Such patriarchal media bias deprives women protesters of the public attention and resources necessary to pressure institutions for redress of their grievance. This triadic cycle is symptomatic of what we term the “paternalist stability model”: A mode of governance converging patriarchal logics with neo-Confucian stability maintenance, central to the maintenance of patriarchal hegemony in China and throughout the Sinosphere.

Through Feminist Eyes: Gender Identities and Gender Roles in the Fiction of Fay Weldon

In a society of patriarchal hegemony, women have been subordinated and humiliated in such a way that many feminist writers have highlighted the pathetic plight of women. The commodification and humiliation to which the women have been subjected form favourite fictional themes for writers like Fay Weldon. The premise is that man is woman’s protector whose authority she has to acquiesce in whether she wills it or not. Female relationships in all their multiplicity and complexity are what Fay Weldon probes in most of her works. Some of her novels set in the seventies reflect certain features of radical feminism in that they deal with gender difference and its impact on women. This article focuses on Weldon’s concern for the creation of female spaces and the need for the assertion of their identities in a patriarchal society. Weldon does not adopt a tone of confrontation, rather strikes a healthy compromise between conciliation and confrontation.

Countering Patriarchy Hegemony

The dominance of male leadership in politics indicates that patriarchal hegemony by the media is deeply entrenched in various layers of society. Women who enter political leadership are considered subordinates of men. Such dominant patriarchal hegemony has undermined and suppressed women’s leadership in the political sphere. This article aims to discuss how Megawati Soekarnoputri in Indonesia and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom emerged against the patriarchal hegemony entrenched in the political systems of their respective countries. We applied a qualitative approach and desk study as a research method, as well as Gramsci’s concept of counter-hegemony. The analysis shows that there were three primary issues that Megawati and Thatcher opposed: (1) dependence on men in building political careers, (2) weak female leadership, and (3) the expectation for women to be obedient. By opposing these issues, these two women leaders could stand out in their respective political arena.

Resistance Againts Patriarchal Cultural Hegemony on Instagram @laviaminora

This research constitutes a qualitative descriptive analysis using Roland Barthes' semiotic theory, focusing on the concepts of denotation and connotation. Centered around the Instagram account @laviaminora, the study describes and analyzes messages of resistance against patriarchal hegemony manifested in visual texts. Employing semiotic analysis methods, this research highlights how signs of sexuality in the account serve as a form of critique against sexual repression and societal norms in Indonesia.Research findings indicate that the sexuality represented in @laviaminora is not merely a denotation of reality but also carries connotations that create subjective and emotional meanings. The account successfully constructs a narrative of resistance against longstanding myths related to patriarchal culture, emphasizing the values of women's freedom. In the context of Indonesian patriarchal society, the socio-cultural construction of sexuality is identified as a tool to maintain male dominance over women.The research concludes that @laviaminora creatively utilizes semiotics as a means to critique and resist patriarchal norms that continue to influence social and cultural life in Indonesia.

Shaping Femininity: Decoding Henrik Ibsen’s Nora in Sudha Murty’s Shrimati

Man-Woman relationships revolving around the themes of romance and friendship, possessiveness and jealousy, understandings and misunderstandings have fascinated writers across the globe from time immemorial. The notions of patriarchy have profoundly influenced the writers in the portrayal of their characters. Nevertheless, there are writers who preferred to choose the paths untrodden. Henrik Johan Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright of the late nineteenth century, could successfully create a powerful character in Nora Helmer, the female protagonist in his play, “A Doll’s House”. Nora is a woman who is denied of any self-fulfilment in a male-dominated marriage. The play created great sensation due to its unconventional ending. Transcending across the borders and boundaries of age and of nation, the storyline remains unchanging even in the present century. Sudha Murty, the new millennium writer in India presents an equally strong character, Shrimati Deshpande in her novel “Gently Falls the Bakula”. Shrimati becomes disillusioned and dissatisfied with her supercilious husband and hence emerges out to arrive at an appropriate decision. Both Nora and Shrimati shatter the patriarchal hegemony and raise a voice of protest against male dominance.

Shadow Lives: Disrupting Gender Patterns in Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle and Maeve Brennan’s The Visitor

The decades that followed Irish independence witnessed a doubling down of efforts to reinforce established gender roles and conservative systems of power in the fledgling state. The tensions that emerged between the cosmopolitanism outside of Ireland and the increasingly isolationist policies within found suitable expression in the contradictory treatment of Kate O’Brien’s work, lauded outside of Ireland, yet subjected at home to the stringent censorship laws that saw both Mary Lavelle (1936) and The Land of Spices (1941) banned upon publication. While, across the Atlantic, Maeve Brennan, then at the very outset of her career, was undergoing a form of self–censorship writing her first extended work, later to be published as The Visitor (2000). In the mid-twentieth century, Brennan and O’Brien explored depictions of women living on the margins of normative domestic life, beyond the institutions of marriage and motherhood. And in this, they paved the way for the radical cultural and spatial re-formations that would signal a new Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this essay, I consider Kate O’Brien’s novel Mary Lavelle (1936), alongside recently uncovered drafts of Brennan’s roughly contemporaneous novella, as a challenge to the patriarchal hegemony that emerged in the newly conceived Free State. And I suggest that in drafting her first extended work of fiction, Brennan was conscious of the proscriptions that O’Brien had fallen foul of in Ireland.

The saga of struggling diversity in the 21st century: a qualitative study

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the barriers that act as a hindrance and are the reason behind the struggles for the successful practice of diversity and inclusion. It also provides suggestions that organisations across the Asian region can adopt to have a conducive work environment to flourish diversity and inclusion.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data were collected from 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews, where the male and female interviewee ratio was 6:4. The interviewees were diversity and inclusion leaders, diversity and inclusion consultants and human resources (HR) experts from Asian countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, UAE, Singapore, Bangladesh and Nepal. The interviewees belonged to varied industries, including information technology, automobile, manufacturing, engineering, logistics and independent consultants. Every interview recorded was transcribed, and an inductive content analysis technique was used using NVivo. Broad themes and several antecedents were identified which hinder the successful practice of diversity and inclusion.FindingsThere exists a patriarchal mindset in society as the main reason; that is why Asian countries are finding it difficult and are struggling to embrace diversity and inclusion successfully. There is a lack of awareness amongst managers about how inclusive gender diversity impacts the company’s financial status. Reports show that companies that have female board members have better profit margins in comparison to those that do not.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was conducted within one industry setting, the service sector; therefore, the findings may not apply to other industries because of the different organisational cultures and HR policies.Practical implicationsThis study offers managerial implications that can help the organisation foster and embrace diversity and inclusion by overcoming the barriers.Social implicationsThere should be fair and equitable inclusivity of females in the workplace. Female employees should be heard without biases and discrimination and allowed to speak up with equity. Females should not be seen differently during organisational decision-making, participation and empowerment.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few to explore the challenges faced by Asian region organisations to embrace diversity and inclusion by empirical evidence. The study shows how the Asian region struggles to go beyond gender diversity and move away from patriarchal hegemony, which is the study’s unique contribution.

Prejudice but no pride: The Portuguese Universal Decimal Classification’s labelling of sexual orientation

Critical cataloguing aims to study cases of social injustice, misrepresentation, negative biases, offensive terminologies, and hegemonic and oppressive hierarchical structures in the representation of communities and identities in knowledge organization systems. The aim of this study is to provide a critical analysis of the representation of sexual orientation in the Portuguese Universal Decimal Classification, grounded in a qualitative content analysis method. The results show that the principle of exhaustiveness does not manifest itself in the representation of sexual orientation. The absence of the term ‘heterosexuality’ mirrors the heteronormative hegemony, while the minoritization of ‘lesbianism’, but not of ‘male homosexuality’, reflects the patriarchal hegemony. The representation of sexual orientation carries the historical pathologization of sexual orientations other than heterosexuality. The Portuguese Universal Decimal Classification conveys negative biases and misrepresents sexual orientation in a way that is irreconcilable with present-day reality. Critical thinking must be encouraged within the library community and the Universal Decimal Classification should be promptly revised and updated.

The Centaur’s Kick: Backlash as Disruptive Upgrades to Patriarchal Orders

Backlash is not always pushing back against progress for women, but how is it still patriarchal? Sliced into three sections – on confluence, contestations, and cartographies – this article draws on a thesis about backlash as the exploitation of insecurity wrought by apparent crises to re/shape social orders, through re-fixing symbolic sites, namely the body, family, and nation. It begins by describing a confluence of types of actors and projects silencing feminist voice. Contesting gendered backlash narratives about the three sites are then explored, followed by a more theoretical section reflecting on cartographies of resonant concurrence and contradictions in backlash. Reflecting on masculinities, identification, and levels of hegemonic power, the argument is that the fixing of sites re/naturalises three deep-level patriarchal logics – phallogocentric binary (body), hierarchical (family), and categorical closed-systems (nation) principles – which helps us theorise the evolution of patriarchal hegemonies. This may inform more strategic countering of backlash.

(Un)doing Gender: The Ethnographic Significance of Mbube Dirge

ABSTRACT Although studies on death and dirge abound, there are fewer studies examining how gendered constructions are enabled in dirge rendition. This article examines how dirge performers in the Mbube communities of northern Cross River State, south-eastern Nigeria extend the dirge beyond mourning to do gender work. Data for this study were collected through a six-month’s qualitative ethnographic fieldwork. With insights drawn from Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s (1987) concept of doing gender, the study accounts for how gendered identities are scripted in dirge rendition. The study illuminates how Mbube women take advantage of the uncensored and spontaneous nature of dirge, extend it beyond mourning to (un)do gender, to question patriarchal norms and to reconstruct the way women are perceived and constructed in the Mbube patriarchal space. This study contributes to growing body of research on gender(ing) by advancing understanding of how women performers employ dirge to subvert patriarchal hegemony.

Patriarchal Hegemony And Its Impact On Women

Patriarchal Hegemony And Its Impact On Women

Between the personal and the political-Arab (Israeli) women talk about incest: A psychoanalytic perspective of qualitative study.

To describe the experiences of Arab Israeli women who have survived incest. Ten Arab-Israeli women who were subjected to incest, were interviewed, using an in-depth semistructure interview. The interviews were analyzed using a qualitative-thematic analysis. Qualitative-thematic analysis of both explicit and implicit contents was applied to reveal linguistic structures the authors identify as related to the women's life experiences. The findings point to the experience of multiple exiles-from their mother's tongue, bodies, and subjectivity. The authors have identified the following themes: (a) usage of the plural first-body voice; (b) referring to one's self in a masculine voice; and (c) shifting between three languages (Arabic, Hebrew, and English. These themes are discussed in light of psychoanalytic literature and that which is concerned with sexual and psychic trauma. Arab-Israeli women seem to lead life as double victims-of both the patriarchal hegemony of men, within the Arab community, and as a minority within the Israeli society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

From Midwife to Male Doctor: Witchcraft, Medical Technology and Patriarchal Hegemony in Sarah Daniels’s Byrthrite

From Midwife to Male Doctor: Witchcraft, Medical Technology and Patriarchal Hegemony in Sarah Daniels’s Byrthrite

A feminist analysis of ‘Dhako en …’ (A woman is …) proverbs among the Luo community of Kenya

Postcolonial feminism conceptualises the female body as volatile to theorise the inherent vibrant activities of (re)identification of the self from the social masculine inscriptions. In addition to that, the female body is also understood as a subject of conquest in a political struggle to emancipate the self from the instigators of its suppression. Given this, the female body is highly political and attempts to emancipate itself from oppressive patriarchal hegemony. In spite of these efforts by feminist scholars to proclaim the inevitable transfiguration of the female body, and to elucidate a transformation towards autonomy of self, discourse in emerging oral tradition and emerging genres of oral literature in contemporary African societies derail the quest for recreation of an ‘envisioned woman’. In this study I analyse ‘Dhako en’ (a woman is) proverbs among the Luo community of Kenya, and investigate their dominant role in the objectification of the female body in contemporary society. These proverbs were collected from Facebook, and then analysed through a deconstructionist approach and postcolonial feminist theory of sexualised objectification. At the superficial level, ‘Dhako en’ proverbs are supposed to entertain by creating comic relief. I argue that the signified is a woman relegated to a mere object of misappropriation, and that the signifiers embody sexual connotations in the pretext of artful use of words verbally. I conclude that these proverbs become existential threats to the ‘transfiguration’ process of the female body and continue to ‘other’ the image of the woman, complicating the overall feminist struggle.

'Human Relationships and Gender Identity: Looking into Mahesh Dattani’s Tara

Mahesh Dattani delves into diverse themes such as place of anomalous or so called freaks in society, patriarchal standpoint, male chauvinism, gender discrimination, child sexual abuse, homosexuality etc. In India women/girls have historically suffered both overt and covert discrimination which targets not just the female body, but also indulges in mental and psychological assaults. And the regrettable element is that the hurt is caused by a person, who is considered to be the protector. In ‘Tara’, Dattani portrays the web of human relationships, through the social issues of gender discrimination resulting from long-established social beliefs. ‘Tara’ mainly deals with the theme of gender bias, followed by patriarchal hegemony. Siamese twins Tara and Chandan must be separated to ensure their survival. The ill placed decision of their mother Bharati and grandfather to benefit the male child Chandan with the third leg which rightfully belonged to Tara brings to the fore the ills of patriarchy. The issues of caste system and social hierarchy are also voiced in the play. For Indian psyche mother is next to God, but in ‘Tara’ the mother becomes the instrument of partisanship and unfairness and forces Tara to lead a life of incompleteness, physically as well as psychologically. Bharati remains guilt ridden, and therefore, she tries to recompense to Tara, in every possible way she can. Tara loves her mother the most. She even considers her mother her idol, but she gets the shock of her life when she comes to know the truth of her incompleteness from her father. By this time Bharti’s guilt takes the better of her and before Tara could speak to her mother regarding this injustice, Bharati goes insane. The influence of patriarchy is evident in Bharti’s character too. Besides being a mother, she is also an educated lady. Thus, the decision of favouring the boy child with the leg doesn't agree with her character. She doesn't come across as a woman having a strong personality and it appears that she has been coerced into giving consent for the ill-fated surgery. She is also the victim of patriarchal dominance of her father. Bharati's personal preference and her father's patriarchal dominance, ruin not only the lives of the twins but also that of Bharati because, she also suffers whole life as a result of this action. Sociologically, ‘patriarchy’ may be interpreted as a metaphor for unquestioned authority over women by all those powers that have the conventional social sanctions to perpetrate. Such transgression is not a momentary exploitation; it is often a protracted ploy to marginalize women/girl children. Plays like Tara can foster an environment of awareness, resistance and proactive modalities to counteract prevalent negative gender bias.