State Feminism Research Articles

Whose Feminism? Gender-Inclusive Policymaking in the Arab Middle East and North Africa

Some feminist scholars have asserted that nominal representation does not secure substantive representation for gender equality and that the mere presence of more women in politics does not necessary lead to inclusive policies. This assertion makes sense because advancing gender equality and equitable opportunities requires a strategy to address intersectional forms of oppression, a systemic requirement that was historically lacking across much of the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. More recently, on the eve of the twenty-sixth anniversary of the 1995 Beijing Conference, governments across the region are laying claim to substantive advances in gender mainstreaming and to increasing the presence of women in political institutions, particularly in the resource-rich gulf. Despite the rush to support gender-inclusive policies, MENA governments did not bring the level or kind of gender equality and inclusion envisioned. This article explores the ways in which state feminism is advanced by governments across the MENA. We conduct a brief historical overview of women’s machineries and feminist movements and propose a way forward that cuts across countries, sectors, and age groups. We envision a consolidated movement that seeks to ensure that the prevailing form of feminism is one that champions the rights and interests of the collective and not of the few who are in power.

Rwandan <em>gukuna</em> trouble: Femocracy, feminisms and critical anthropology

This article analyses the ritual gukuna (i.e. the elongation of the labia minora) in Rwanda and among the Rwandan diaspora in Italy. This practice – along with the kunyaza (male sexual technique) – is expected to increase sexual pleasure. When I started fieldwork(in the late 1990s), the gukuna could be seen as a secret of female sexuality. Since the mid-2000s, new subjectivities started to emerge, with the introduction of gender-sensitive policies in the post-genocide context and with the rise of state feminism and a femocratic class. Furthermore, the movie Sacred water (2016) revealed the gukuna to the broader public, as a mystery of female ejaculation. Yet, according to WHO the gukuna remains a genital mutilation that must be “eradicated”. Properly understood, gukuna reveals and challenges the culturalist and victimizing assumptions of the hegemonic representations of both FGM and the “African women”, highlighting the continuities between the moralities of colonialism and humanitarianism, and some feminist trends, now locally incorporated. The article aims at deconstructing the gender mainstreaming discourse around gukuna as a “harmful traditional practice”, in order to reflect on gender in Rwandan contemporary politics.

‘State Feminism' dan Perjuangan Wanita di Tunisia Pasca Arab Spring 2011

Over the last decade, the Arab Spring phenomenon in the Middle East and North Africa has brought significant transformation towards Tunisia’s political landscape. During the 14 days of street protest, Tunisian women have played critical roles in assisting their male counterparts in securing the ultime goal of the revolution – regime change. This article argues that after the 2011 revolution, the new Tunisian government has gradually adopted the principal idea of state feminism, which emphasizes on the role of ruling government via affirmative action in supporting the agenda of women’s rights. In so doing, this article examines the connection between state feminism and the plight of women’s struggles in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution and, looks into the impact of top down polices, and government approaches towards improving the status of women. This article concludes that women in the post revolutionary era have experienced a new trajectory in political and social freedom,the country has recorded a spike increase in the number of active female lawmakers, government executives, politicians, electoral candidates and the emergence of human right groups, gender activists and feminist movements. All these ‘women’s actors’ have directly involved in the process of drafting the new Tunisian constitution, which resulted in the acknowlegdement of women’s rights protection via article 46 in 2014 and the Nobel Peace Price Award in 2015.

Decorative Arts of the Tunisian École: Fabrications of Modernism, Gender, and Power

Decorative Arts of the Tunisian École: Fabrications of Modernism, Gender, and Power

From Violated Girl to Revolutionary Woman

Feminism, both as theory and praxis, has long grappled with the dilemma of sex difference—whether to celebrate women’s “difference” from men as offering a more emancipatory potential or to challenge those differences as man-made in the process of delineating modern sexed subjects. While this debate may be familiar within contemporary feminist discourses, communist feminisms that stretched across the Cold War divide were no less conflicted about what to do with sex difference, most explicitly represented by sexual violence and biological motherhood. Even as communist states implemented top-down, often paternalistic measures, such policies were carried out ostensibly to elevate women’s status as a form of state feminism professing equality for the sexes. Comparing North Korea with China, this article explores how communist feminisms attempted to tackle the dilemma of sexual difference. Through an intertextual reading of two of the most popular revolutionary operas in 1970s communist East Asia—The Flower Girl from North Korea and The White-Haired Girl from China—it attends to the diverse strategies in addressing the “woman question” and the possibilities as well as limits opened up by communist feminisms.

Vörumerkið jafnrétti í utanríkisstefnu Íslands

Þessi rannsókn greinir hvernig vörumörkun birtist í utanríkisþjónustu Íslands í gegnum jafnréttismál. Einnig er leitast við að greina hvaða aðferðir eru nýttar við vörumörkun og hvaða þættir valda því að jafnréttismál verða fyrir valinu. Breiður kenningarammi er mótaður úr kenningum smáríkjafræða, kenningum um vörumörkun ríkja og femínískum fræðum í alþjóðasamskiptum. Tekin voru viðtöl við fimm fyrrverandi og núverandi starfsmenn utanríkisþjónustu Íslands og orðræðugreiningu beitt á þau. Þrjú þemu voru mótuð út frá niðurstöðum orðræðugreiningarinnar; vörumerkið jafnrétti, aðferðir við vörumörkun og framboð og eftirspurn. Niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar voru þær að greina má ómeðvitaða vörumörkun í gegnum jafnréttismál sem birtist einna helst sem rík áhersla á málaflokkinn í allri vinnu utanríkisþjónustunnar, innanlands sem erlendis. Sértækari vörumörkun á sér einnig stað í formi þess að færa jafnréttisumræðuna til karla. Ísland beitir þremur meginaðferðum við vörumörkun, en þær eru: kynjasamþætting, að taka sér dagskrárvald í málaflokknum og alþjóðleg samvinna. Framboð og eftirspurn virðast helsti áhrifavaldurinn fyrir því að jafnréttismál urðu fyrir valinu sem vörumerki Íslands. Ísland hefur mikið fram að færa í málaflokknum, hefur skipað sér í framvarðarsveit í jafnréttismálum og vakið athygli alþjóðasamfélagsins fyrir vinnu sína. Sú athygli hefur hvetjandi áhrif fyrir áframhaldandi vinnu ríkisins innan málaflokksins. Engu að síður er nauðsynlegt að vera meðvituð um það hvers vegna íslenska ríkið telur þessa stöðu eftirsóknaverða og í hvaða tilgangi hennar er leitað.

“I Want to be a Leader, But Men Are Better Than Women in Leadership Positions”

Abstract This research paper investigates female perceptions of female leadership in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where, particularly recently, state feminism has supported women’s occupation of leadership positions. It thus explores how state feminism’s portrayal of the ideal woman in leadership has impacted Emirati women’s perceptions of female leaders. A survey comprising 350 female Emirati students was undertaken, and results were supported by interviews. Findings suggest that although 93 percent of respondents “wanted to” or “probably wanted to” be leaders, they nevertheless endorsed “sexist” stereotypes and legitimizing myths. These contradictions are due, most likely, to ambivalent messages disseminated by the state and by society at large about female leaders. This research postulates that, while women have gained more agency in the public sphere through occupying leadership positions, their own perceptions and portrayals of acceptable gender roles are complex and ambivalent.

Emirati Women Leaders in the Cultural Sector

Abstract During the last decade Emirati women, due to their ever increasing educational achievements—sustained by a state politics of modernization—have ventured into a great variety of occupations. As a corollary, the term “women leadership” has become fashionable in public and governmental discourses, highlighting Emirati women’s successes. In the article, I compare the state narrative on women leadership and female empowerment with the experiences of 30 Emirati women leaders from the cultural sector with whom I conducted extensive interviews (2018–19) about their career pathways, family background, achievements, and the various challenges and obstacles they face—both at work and at home. In this context, it is examined how Emirati women leaders are compelled to navigate between state feminist discourses and the still prevalent conservative gender role and value expectations in the United Arab Emirates. Finally, I discuss whether and to what extent UAE state feminism facilitates Emirati women’s empowerment.

Pay equity through collective bargaining: when voluntary state feminism meets selective business practice

The article traces the story of equal pay policy formation from the early 1980s to the present, from agenda-setting to policy adoption through to implementation, evaluation and outcomes. Until 2010, equal pay policy was implemented through collective bargaining at company and sector levels within a legal framework that failed to establish penalties for non-compliance. Persistent mobilization of feminist actors inside and outside of government contributed to breaking with this symbolic policy. A financial penalty for non-compliant companies was established. The article shows that the strengthening of the existing framework was not sufficient to counter the reluctance of companies to make a solid commitment to closing the gender pay gap, and the outcome appears to be a clear case of “gender accommodation” in GEPP terms. However, recent feminist mobilization around more effective implementation on equal pay suggests that the struggle for more authoritative equal pay policies in the firm is still on the policy agenda.

Only in the Philippines? Postcolonial exceptionalisms and Filipina feminisms

ABSTRACTExceptionalism as a framing discourse reveals socio-historical insights on postcolonialism and postnationalism, providing fertile ground for articulating and investigating the multiplicities and historical vicissitudes constituting Filipina feminist articulations of social identities and engagements with multi-scalar politics. Historical and contemporary Philippine/Filipino exceptionalism claims have inspired and galvanized transnational feminist spaces, processes, and practices, creating ideoloscapes (ideologies and discourses) and practiscapes (actions). Using framing theory to compare exceptionalisms’ discursive practices and their entanglements with feminisms, this paper analyzes episodic historical accounts, documents, and interviews with feminist leaders to demonstrate how Filipina feminists mobilize exceptionalisms as reference frames in different logics, spaces, and political opportunities. It examines three framing episodes of Filipina feminist politics – suffragist frames during the American colonial period, nationalist feminists’ frames from the Marcos to the Duterte presidencies, and transnationalist (state) feminists’ frames within multi-scalar spaces and the context of imperial and other exceptionalism variants. These episodic framing practices demonstrate the formation and reproduction of dominant feminist politics and publics that have yet to acknowledge their shared traumatic histories and fully decolonize their narratives and engagements.

Baʿathist State Feminism: The General Federation of Iraqi Women in the Global 1970s

Recent scholarship has emphasized the centrality of gender to nation-building projects in the modern Middle East, particularly in constituting the legal rights of citizens and behavioral norms that shaped the relations of men and women to one another and defined their public roles, particularly in the workforce. The example of post-independence Iraq under the Baʿath Party demonstrates—using official publications—how women's organizations were consolidated under state control within a framework of official feminism. The Iraqi woman became crucial both symbolically to the Party's ideology, as well as instrumentally in the name of economic progress. Elite women in Iraq attempted to negotiate the constraints of the patriarchal bargain and push for progress through the avenues available via state feminism. Simultaneously, the sole legal organization constrained women's activities through coordination and surveillance, and co-opted women's labor on behalf of the state, the Party, and its leading personalities (which became increasingly commensurate).

Women and Employment in Tunisia

Tunisia's legacy of “state feminism” and its strong civil society—including human rights, labor, and women's rights organizations—have placed Tunisian women in advance of their Arab sisters, and women are present across an array of professions and occupations. Still, most Tunisian women remain outside the labor force, face precarious forms of employment, or are unemployed. This article examines women's employment patterns, problems, and prospects in the light of an untoward economic environment, conservative social norms, and feminist advocacy. Drawing on interview and documentary data, and informed by feminist political economy and institutionalism, it highlights the importance of institutional supports for working mothers and improved work conditions to encourage more female economic participation and stronger labor-force attachment and thus to weaken patriarchal attitudes and values. The paper points to the need for both class-based and gender-based policies with respect to women's economic participation and rights.

The politics of persuasion. Opinion-shaping activities and gender equality in Sweden, 1960-1970

ABSTRACTIn this paper, the role and significance of opinion-shaping and persuasion activities are explored through an analysis of the activation of women in the Swedish labour market in the 1960s, highlighting the ways in which gender equality ideals became infused in these activities through a process of ‘transformative state feminism’. The analysis draws on qualitative data including archival material and interviews. Activation policies in the 1960s emphasised the ideology of full employment including the importance of increasing women’s participation in paid work, hence paving the way for a dual-earner family model. The concrete measures associated with implementation of such policies were carried out by the National Labour Market Board (AMS), and included retraining and advanced training courses but also a number of innovative opinion-shaping activities. Two of these are analysed in this paper: a radio series called ‘Housewife switches job’ and the establishment of a so-called ‘activation inspector’. Following this analysis, the underlying ideas permeating such opinion-shaping activities and the actors who infused ideals of gender equality into the process are examined. In conclusion, lessons for the ongoing transformation of traditional gender relations and prospects for future advances in gender equality are discussed.

“Foreign Funding” Case No. 173/2011

“Foreign Funding” Case No. 173/2011

“Being a Good Daughter of the Party”?

Like other socialist institutions surviving in China’s market reforms, the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF or WF when referring to its local branches), as the only state-sponsored organisation representing women’s interests, has been constantly refashioning itself to meet new existential challenges. In July 2015, the central leadership of the Chinese Communist Party commanded a new wave of mass organisational reforms, in which the Women’s Federation’s alienation from the grassroots and a weakening representation of women’s interests were questioned. After three years of intensive reform, are the local structures of the ACWF being substantially improved to reconnect to its mass base? Drawing from extensive fieldwork in three provinces and a neo-institutional analysis, this article argues that in the short term, although the reform serves principally as a consolidation of Party authority, local Women’s Federations are creatively using the reform to expand their popular base and broaden their representativeness. In the long term, however, local WFs are facing unreformed institutional problems such as political marginalisation, bureaucratisation, and ineffective implementation, which stagnate further development of China’s state feminism.

Gleichstellungspolitik in der Schweiz: Einführung in ein umstrittenes PolitikfeldFuchs, GesineOpladen, Verlag Barbara Budrich (2019), 263 p., ISBN 978‐3‐8474‐0

Gleichstellungspolitik in der Schweiz: Einführung in ein umstrittenes PolitikfeldFuchs, GesineOpladen, Verlag Barbara Budrich (2019), 263 p., ISBN 978‐3‐8474‐0

Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang

Reviewed by: Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang Aminda Smith Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. xv + 380. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. I recently attended a lecture by a well-known China watcher who is often cited for her expertise on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies related to women and gender equality. When an audience member asked whether there were contestations, over antifeminist policies, between the Party leadership and officials in the Women's Federation (Funü lianhehui 妇女联合会, or Fulian), the speaker responded by claiming that the Fulian cannot be considered a feminist organization as it is simply an arm of the Party. While this claim is not entirely false, it is misleading. Moreover, such a position is all too common in the reportage and scholarship on the People's Republic of China (PRC): the CCP is often portrayed as a thoroughly patriarchal, Borg-like monolith, just as masculinist and oppressive to women as any other modern state power, despite its early claims to the contrary. Thus, Zheng Wang's forceful and convincing argument to the contrary makes her new book a crucial intervention in the fields of PRC history and the history of Chinese feminism. As her title suggests, among [End Page 408] Party members and PRC state leaders, Wang finds committed feminist women, who truly endeavored to bring about a socialist feminist revolution. Finding Women in the State, organized into two parts and eight chapters, considers the work of Chinese Communist feminists through a series of cases. Because Wang's argument requires the close reading and unpacking of extremely rich and detailed source materials, her chapters are quite dense. And her discussion is so wide-ranging that one sometimes senses at least two different books in this one volume. But in the end, all of the pieces coalesce around Wang's answer to an important historiographical question: how do we evaluate the CCP's famous claim to have liberated women, epitomized in Mao Zedong's all-too-oft-quoted pronouncement that "women hold up half the sky"? The research conducted over the past several decades suggests one answer: Chinese women were, and remain, partially liberated—thanks to the whims of a male-dominated and patriarchal Communist Party that nevertheless maintained its rhetoric supporting gender equality and thus sporadically promoted women's rights when doing so did not undermine other Party goals. Wang shows, however, that what appears to be a series of half-hearted and superficial concessions made by a masculinist state are actually evidence of hard-won victories achieved by women working in the Women's Federation and other Party-state units; these feminists were truly committed to the Maoist claim that women's liberation was central to China's socialist revolution. Wang does not deny that the sites in which state feminists worked, such as the Women's Federation, were inseparable parts of the Communist Party. Indeed, it was enthusiasm for socialism's liberatory promise that led these women to join the revolution. Those feminists who held positions within the PRC state certainly demonstrated their loyalty to the Party. Crucially, however, Wang shows that cadres and leaders who did women's work (funü gongzuo 妇女工作) also saw themselves as quasi-independent actors, dedicated to opposing patriarchy in Chinese society and in the Communist state. And their pursuit of a bona fide feminist agenda caused repeated clashes between state feminists and other Party members, including those in the central leadership. This book traces the histories of those state feminists committed to women's work. It demonstrates that while their battles were all uphill and against strong opposition from many Party men, [End Page 409] state feminists fought hard and sometimes successfully fomented real change for Chinese women. Wang reveals that the effects of state feminism can be seen everywhere during the socialist period, even in high-level Party policy and propaganda. She also argues, however, that historians must search for feminism in PRC history because it...

Women’s rights or women without rights? State feminism and the fight against prostitution

La loi du 13 avril 2016 « visant a renforcer la lutte contre le systeme prostitutionnel et a accompagner les personnes prostituees » a consacre l’integration du cadre abolitionniste au feminisme d’Etat en France. L’analyse des debats a l’Assemblee nationale et au Senat souligne ainsi que ce sont les parlementaires insere.e.s dans les institutions etatiques de defense de la cause des femmes qui ont porte et defendu cette loi promulguee au nom des droits des femmes. Mais si les personnes prostituees, percues avant tout comme des femmes migrantes sans titre de sejour, sont des victimes a proteger, la loi ne leur offre finalement que des droits limites, voire aucun droit si elles ne s’engagent pas a cesser leur activite. De ce point de vue, la prise en charge de la question prostitutionnelle par le feminisme d’Etat met en evidence la conception historiquement et socialement situee des droits des femmes qui est defendue. Le debat parlementaire autour de la prostitution agit ainsi comme un puissant revelateur de la fragilite et de la faible autonomie de la cause des femmes au sein de l’Etat.

Feminism as Power and Resistance: An Inquiry into Different Forms of Swedish Feminist Resistance and Anti-Genderist Reactions

This article explores how resistance and power are intertwined within the field of mainstream Swedish feminism, by analyzing some of its more visible expressions and strategies. These feminist resistance strategies could be described as circulating resistance (e.g., the #metoo campaign), public assemblies, the more subtle “disciplinary resistance”, and state feminism. The article illustrates how these different forms of resistance fuel different reactions from movements that reiterate different discourses of “anti-genderism”. In addition, some forms of feminism (state feminism and feminist disciplinary resistance) sometimes develop into, or overlap with, different technologies of power.

MINISKIRTS AND “BEATNIKS”: GENDER ROLES, NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND MORALS IN 1960S TUNISIA

AbstractIn the decade following independence, the Tunisian state embraced secular feminism as part of the single-party monopoly on political life and economic development. Yet its celebration of new family laws as an aspect of modernization was marred by anxieties about the sexual and moral implications of modern womanhood. Tracing references to the miniskirt in presidential speeches and the women's press, I demonstrate how efforts to delineate the boundaries of proper appearance gave tangible form to the amorphous question of morality. Parallel concerns about long-haired youth further indicated the bourgeois basis of the modernizing visual aesthetic as it restrained young men. Through fashion, urban educated women utilized the press to negotiate the limits of the more politically sensitive topic of state feminism. Middle-class debates about dress reveal that nationalist secular feminists who benefitted from the state's definition of women's rights questioned hegemonic conceptions of womanhood and articulated alternate versions of masculinity.