Sexist Practices Research Articles

Oppositional Consciousness within an Oppositional Realm: The Case of Feminism and Womanism in Rap and Hip Hop, 1976-2004

Hip Hop is an oppositional cultural realm rooted in the socio-political and historical experiences and consciousness of economically disadvantaged urban black youth of the late 20th century. (1) By numerous accounts, Hip Hop originated in the South Bronx section of New York City during the mid-1970s from a confluence of factors, including ethnic dislocations spurred by the construction of the South Bronx highway, and a rapid decline in municipal services induced by severe cuts in federal funding at the end of the Great Society era. The local job loss and worker obsolescence precipitated by the national shift from an industrial to a service, information, and finance economy generated an artistically productive crossroads of lack and desire that ultimately gave birth to the culture known as Hip Hop. (2) Tricia Rose has characterized this time and place as an intersection of alienation, prophetic imagination, and yearning where postindustrial conditions, technological innovations, and Afrodiasporic cultural frames and priorities came together to produce the techno-black cultural syncretism known as rap music. (3) Braiding strands of protest and pleasure together into a seamless flow, rap initially expressed both gleeful and aggressive views of survival, social critique, and revelry to neighborhood audiences comprised primarily of African American and Latino youth. (4) Over time, however, and due in part to signal shifts in both commercial culture and the mass media, rap's audience grew beyond the bounds of neighborhood to encompass first the larger city of New York, later the nation (emerging first in a variety of regional flavors, then becoming regionally syncretized), and ultimately the globe. Today, Hip Hop culture, which encompasses not only rap music and videos but also particular forms of dress, dance, language, and attitude has been described as the new global cultural dominant. One thing that has not changed about Hip Hop, however, is that it continues to represent the voices and visions of the culturally, politically, and economically marginal and disenfranchised. Even as Hip Hop becomes global, its perspective is still centered in the experiences of the underdogs and it still expresses the cultural flair of African American and Latino people. Women have been integral to the evolution of Hip Hop culture, especially rap music, since the beginning. (5) Yet, historical accounts and critical analyses of the Hip Hop phenomenon have tended to downplay the contributions of women. Women have played pivotal roles as artists, writers, performers, producers, and industry executives. Women have influenced rap style and technique, ultimately shaping aesthetic standards and technological practices utilized by both women and men. Nevertheless, certain facts remain undeniable. First, men have outnumbered women in both the artistic arena and the corporate end of Hip Hop. Male rappers have outnumbered female rappers and male industry leaders have outnumbered female industry operatives. The production pipeline, from writers and performers to producers and executives, has effectively functioned like a modified old boys' club, hampering women's entry and ascent to power within the industry in ways both subtle and overt. Now that Hip Hop has expanded beyond music into video production, clothing design, and other lifestyle enhancement domains, the processes impeding women's participation and power-sharing have only become more widespread. Second, a masculinist discursive strand is clearly identifiable in both rap music and its parent culture, Hip Hop. (6) The numerical preponderance of men, combined with pre-existing masculinist scripts and sexist practices in virtually all occupational and commercial realms as well as the society at large, has ensured the greater visibility of men's prerogatives and perspectives relative to women's in both rap music and Hip Hop. Due largely to masculinist biases already in place in the domains of advertising and news reporting, the public face of both Hip Hop and rap is masculine and the mainstream discourse of rap as Hip Hop's mouthpiece is masculine. …

Gender-Biased Diagnosing of Women's Medical Complaints: Contributions of Feminist Thought, 1970–1995

ABSTRACT With the advent of second-wave feminism during the 1970s, a significant body of literature emerged describing sexist practices in women's health care. Gender-biased diagnosing-the notion that somatic complaints by female medical patients are more likely to be labeled by physicians as psychosomatic-became a concern that garnered considerable attention in Europe and the United States because of the increased health risks it posed for women. This article examines the impact of feminist knowledge on this topic during the quarter century spanning 1970–1995. Analysis of the literature reveals feminist perspectives played a critical role in uncovering and problematizing gender bias in women's health care.

STRATEGIES OF SOCIAL AND SEXUAL CONTROL OF MALAYSIAN WOMEN IN PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTIONAL CARE

An ethnographic study of female psychiatric patients was undertaken in East Malaysia. Findings indicate that these service users were subject to a number of sexist and oppressive practices that militate against their freedom of movement on the wards as well as their social interaction in the wider context of the hospital. Stereotypic notions of female sexuality and morality act as forms of moral containment and are interpreted in the hospital context as requiring heavy custodial care by the hospital authorities.

Eclipsing Voice in Research with Young Children

This article examines two vignettes taken from a research project designed to give voice to children's understandings of equity and social diversity in order to raise questions about how this project potentially reinforced inequities in children's lives. A rhizoanalysis of the vignettes is used to raise questions about how young children perform diverse discourses of ‘race’. This paper specifically focuses on the extent to which some of the voices produced in the research colluded in the production of racist and sexist practices. It uses this focus to raise questions generated through the rhizoanalysis for researchers who want to give voice to young children. Specifically, it asks if it is time for researchers to move beyond a concern for children's ‘voices’ and towards transforming inequitable power relations in our research with them.

MIGRANT WOMEN, DOMESTIC WORK AND THE SEX TRADE IN GREECE-A SNAPSHOT OF MIGRANT POLICY IN THE MAKING

This article focuses on migrant women’s diverse experiences in the Greek labour market. Since the early 1980s all four Southern European countries of the EU, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy, have been transformed from emigration into immigration countries. The new immigrants, mostly undocumented and illegal, join the informal labour market under highly exploitative conditions. Starting from migrant women’s own perspectives, we analyze their experiences (1) in the framework of the unfolding «Mediterranean immigration model»; (2) in the midst of increasing migratory flows to Greece in particular; (3) in the context of the legal and policy framework for migrants in Greece; and (4) in the framework of women’s citizenship in society. Our qualitative study of immigrant women in Greece fleshes out the general trends of women's participation in informal labour markets, documents the multi-layered nature of their economic and social exclusion, and highlights the intersecting racialization and sexist practices shaping their experiences

NEVER OUTSIDE THE LABOUR MARKET, BUT ALWAYS OUTSIDERS: FEMALE MIGRANT WORKERS IN GREECE

This article focuses on migrant women’s diverse experiences in the Greek labour market. Since the early 1980s all four Southern European countries of the EU, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy, have been transformed from emigration into immigration countries. The new immigrants, mostly undocumented and illegal, join the informal labour market under highly exploitative conditions. Starting from migrant women’s own perspectives, we analyze their experiences (1) in the framework of the unfolding «Mediterranean immigration model» (2) in the midst of increasing «South» – «North» migrations and increasing migratory flows to Greece in particular; (3) in the context of the legal and policy framework for migrants in Greece; and (4) in the framework of women’s citizenship in society. Our qualitative study of immigrant women in Greece fleshes out the general trends of women's participation in informal labour markets, documents the multi-layered nature of their economic and social exclusion, and highlights the intersecting racialization and sexist practices shaping their experiences

Prenatal Care for Women Who Are Addicted: Implications for Gender-Sensitive Practice

This article examines legal and gender-sensitive interventions for prenatal drug abuse and the greater benefits that accrue to women when gender-sensitive approaches are used. It also discusses the disparate use of legal proceedings against poor women and women of color, pejorative attitudes and behaviors of prenatal health workers that compromise their relationship with women who are addicted, and sexist practices that place mothers who use drugs more at risk of legal interventions in health care settings than fathers who are addicted. Attention is given to the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision that makes it unlawful for health care providers to conduct involuntary drug tests of pregnant women who are suspected of drug use.

Prenatal Care for Women Who Are Addicted: Implications for Gender-Sensitive Practice

This article examines legal and gender-sensitive interventions for prenatal drug abuse and the greater benefits that accrue to women when gender-sensitive approaches are used. It also discusses the disparate use of legal proceedings against poor women and women of color, pejorative attitudes and behaviors of prenatal health workers that compromise their relationship with women who are addicted, and sexist practices that place mothers who use drugs more at risk of legal interventions in health care settings than fathers who are addicted. Attention is given to the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision that makes it unlawful for health care providers to conduct involuntary drug tests of pregnant women who are suspected of drug use.

Representing Blackness: Instrumentalizing Race and Gender in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's <i>The Marriage of Maria Braun</i>

The Marriage ofMaria Braun uses race and gender to highlight certain as- pects of West post-World War II cultural identity and to critique West Germany's failure to effect social and political change in the postwar years. Analyzing three pivotal sequences from the film, the essay discusses the ways in which Fassbinder stages Maria's collaboration with white male power at the expense of the two African-American characters. The essay ends by asking whether Fassbinder's portrayal (and, perhaps, reproduction) of racialist and sexist practices have the potential to result in a socially transformative cinematic praxis. (IMOS) As has often been observed, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, more than any other director, was stubbornly determined to make that confront his country's recent history. While his most explicitly his- toriographie films—The Marriage ofMaria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun, 1978), Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, 1981), and Lola (1981), subtitled BRD 1, 2, and 3—are not, as David Bathrick says, films about history, they are characterized by a cinematic stra- tegy that is itself a kind of historiography (37). Given Fassbinder's (and his generation's) fixation on cultural and national identity, it is not surprising that his historiographie confront issues that make up the so-called German question, such as Vergangenheitsver- drangung (repression of the past), Vergangenheitsbewaltigung (coming to terms with the past), and the ways intersections of gender, sexuality, class, and race are inscribed in West culture. Within this gen- eral field of thought I want to consider the representation of West Ger- man and US institutionalized practices regarding race and gender in The Marriage of Maria Braun. I will argue that the film focuses on these

On the Crisis of Self-Definition in English Studies

T he final decades of the twentieth century witnessed profusion of books, journal articles, and conferences earnest and frequently dogmatic in their attempts map, interpret, and define the ever-untidy topography of English studies. Distinct in their impassioned pleas either scrap racist, classist, sexist practices in literary studies or, the contrary, preserve the legacy of Western in English education, the chief pugilists on either side of the quarrel are unified by the urgency and totality of their polemics. Lamenting academic practices in the humanities, Gertrude Himmelfarb, for example, calls postmodernism not just revisionary, but revolutionary (143), while Henry Louis Gates Jr. has vowed to fight against anyone who tries drag us back traditional literary practices (21). With equal enthusiasm, John Ellis' provocative ubi sunt, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, warns of a startling decline in the intellectual quality of work in the humanities and descent into intellectual triviality and irrelevance that amounts betrayal of the university as an institution (228). Harold Bloom's Western Canon: Books and School ofthe Ages is equally elegiac: The shadows lengthen in our evening land, and we approach the second millennium expecting further shadowing (16). At the close of the twentieth century, disputants on either side of the culture war are as divided about the nature, value, and purpose of literary studies as they are contentious.

Older Women and the Health Care System: A Time for Change

SUMMARY In spite of women's active involvement in a woman's health care movement, the mainline health care system continues to hold tight to its androcentric focus. If women are to be subjected to a health care system that employs sexist and ageist practices, the quality of life in their later years will continue to be jeopardized. The purpose of this paper is to first, recognize the existing health care practices which limit the health care opportunities and choices of older women; and secondly, to discuss how such basic feminist principles as education, egalitarianism, empowerment, and inclusion can be used to improve an older woman's experience.

Rights of Exit

Social groups claim authority to impose restrictions on their members that the state cannot. Churches, ethnic groups, minority nations, universities, social clubs, and families all regulate belief and behavior in ways that would be obviously unjust in the context of a state and its citizens. All religions impose doctrinal requirements; many also enforce sexist practices and customs. Some universities impose stringent speech and conduct codes on their students and faculty. Parochial schools discriminate in their hiring practices. Those who complain about such internal restrictions on the liberties of members might well be told to “love it or leave it.”

MALE COACH/FEMALE ATHLETE RELATIONS: GENDER AND POWER RELATIONS IN COMPETITIVE SPORT

This article reports participation observation evidence, questionnaire survey, and in-depth interview data in an examination of the male coach / female athlete relationship in competitive sport. Focusing on athletics in the United Kingdom, the authors demonstrate the gendered nature of female athlete / male coach relationships, and the dynamics of power and control that contribute to the nature and perpetuation of those relationships. The vulnerability of the young female athlete in the coaching situation is identified, as that vulnerability is manifest in a variety of forms of sexist practice and sexual harassment. The article points to the complexity and normalcy of the organizational sexuality characteristic of the sports culture and the forms of domination and control that can be exerted by the coach. Sports professionals are urged to recognize the serious implications of the gender and power relations underpinning the male coach / female athlete dynamic in competitive sport.

Dehexing sex: Russian womanhood during and after Glasnost

Glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union revolutionized Russian society. What effects, however, did they have on the status, role, and image of women in Russian culture? Examining the past turbulent decade of transition to democracy and a market economy, Dehexing Sex traces the ways in which Russia's concept of womanhood both changed and remained the same, taking into account dominant ideologies and social philosophies, sociopolitical organizations, women's writings, literary criticism, film, and popular cultural forms such as pornography.The lively, engaging chapters of this book examine texts by contemporary women writers in the context of the political, social, economic, biological, psychological, and aesthetic transformations that helped define them. Goscilo reveals that the Russian cultural revolution has reshaped the female image in varied and often contradictory ways. While increased interaction with the West fostered gender awareness, it also introduced imported Western sexist practices--especially the exploitation of female bodies--formerly proscribed by a puritanical censorship. Popular magazines, newspapers, and television propagated the image of woman as mother, ornament, and sexual object, even as women's fiction conceived of womanhood in complex psychological terms that undermined the gender stereotypes which had ruled Soviet thinking for more than 70 years.With the aid of feminist and cultural theory, Dehexing Sex investigates the overt and internalized misogyny that combined with the genuinely liberalizing forces unleashed by Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and perestroika. It exposes Russia's repressive romance with womanhood as a metaphor for nationhood and explores Russian women's ironic recasting of national mythologies.Impressive . . . an important contribution to Russian studies and to women's studies. The author is an outstanding scholar, an energetic and original thinker, and her writing sparkles with imagination and wit. --Stephanie Sandler, Amherst CollegeHelena Goscilo is Associate Professor and Chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh.

Sex, Sign and Symbol:

This article begins with an examination of semiotics to explain the political language by focusing on three aspects of communication. First is a discussion and examination of how language and speech establish a communication system which rules citizens. Second is a demonstration of how citizen readers can play active roles in the construction of meanings. Third is an examination of how new speech practices can introduce new politics. By drawing upon U.S. feminists who employ semiotics, the article proceeds to reveal the power of this approach for understanding the sexist practices that inhibit political life. Finally, the article develops four political strategies, inspired by feminist semiotics, that promise to change political life in order to move us closer to gender justice.

General Practice, Social Work, and Mental Health Sections: The Social Control of Women

A survey was undertaken of all referrals for compulsory admission received by a city mental health centre over a one year period. The centre receives the overwhelming majority of all these referrals in the city. Referrals from GPs were compared with other referrals focusing particularly on women. The results indicate GPs discriminated against women, referring considerably more women than men with less emphasis on major (psychotic) mental illness. The involvement of approved social workers (ASWs) in the assessment process was associated with diversion of many of the women away from compulsory admission, although even they appeared affected by patriarchal assumptions. GPs' behaviour with regard to sections is consistent with reports about sexist practice in other areas of work. This, however, is particularly grave with sections because of civil liberties implications. The article concludes that ASWs need be aware of potential sexist GP practice, that their psychosocial perspective is critical to assessment and that ASW training should include gender issues.

‘Woman's place is in the home’: a major cultural theme in girls' learning and women's teaching

Sexist practices within schools must be understood in context of the sexism which pervades the culture and structure of our society, rather than as a feature of the education system itself. Sexist practices include explicit references, within formal teaching and corporate school activities, to the theme of women's essential domesticity. Teachers become agents of sexism because, despite support for equality of opportunity, they share with pupils and parents a common sexist culture. Women teachers are victims as well as agents of sexism, and fail, as compared with men, to gain promotion. They are in the ‘wrong’ subjects, they face discrimination because of possible pregnancy, and their confidence is undermined through continual reference, by male colleagues, to their sex rather than their professional identity. Because they generally do not achieve posts of authority, they are unable to present girls with role models of female achievement. Among the implications for policy is the need for all involved in ed...

Feminist Issues in Sex Therapy

This article reviews sex therapy with heterosexual couples in terms of feminist perspectives on practice with women. The possibility of sexist practice is examined in relation to assessment, goal-setting, intervention and the evaluation of effectiveness. The implications of a feminist practice with sexual problems are identified.

Activité économique des femmes du Tiers Monde et perspectives de baisse de leur fécondité

Despite recent efforts to achieve a better understanding of the economic roles of women throughout the world, progress has been impeded by the lack of available statistical material concerning their employment. The importance of women's productive activity remains unrecognized in most of the Third World because it is largely accomplished outside the cash sector and is not included in any statistics. 72% of women in developing countries live in rural zones, where they are occupied in production, processing, storage, and preparation of foodstuffs. Many also assist the family budget by selling foodstuffs and craft products. The role of women in agriculture and commerce varies in different regions; it is estimated that 60-80% of agricultural labor in Africa and about 40% in Latin America is female. Third World women have also found employment in labor intensive industries such as electronics and textiles. The active female population grew from 1950-75 at 2.5%/1year in Asia, 1.9% in Africa, and 3.2% in Latin America. Major variations are seen in the female participation rates of countries within the same regions. The number of women working in the nonorganized sector is not known. Particularly in cities, most new jobs have been in the service sector. Prior to the spread of the capitalist mode of production, the productive and reproductive roles of women were equally significant and compatible, and women had a greater weight in family and community. With the separation of the cash and subsistence sectors, women were increasingly relegated to the least prestigious and least remunerative sectors. When forced to seek work in the modern sector, their lack of education and the persistence of traditional sexist practices allowed them to find only the least qualified, most poorly paid, and least secure jobs in the primary, secondary, or tertiary sectors. The introduction of technical development into Third World countries benefitted women very little, since it was usually addressed only to men. Although migration for many women had a fertility dampening effect, for many others it reinforced their attachment to reproductive traditions. The maintenance of high levels of fertility among Third World women, despite their participation in paid labor, can be explained in part by tradition and religious values and productive roles of children, but also by dissatisfaction with the low level employment conditions available to them.