Struggle For Empowerment Research Articles

Analysis of the representation of women's struggles for empowerment in the literature of Maitreyi Pushpa

Maitreyi Pushpa's literary works deeply depict the experiences, struggles and aspirations of women in the socio-cultural landscape of India. The objective of this research paper is to critically analyze how Maitreyi Pushpa represents the struggle for women's empowerment through her literary works. It highlights the nuanced portrayal of female characters in Maitreyi Pushpa's writings, exploring the multifaceted dimensions of their fight against patriarchy, social norms and institutional oppression. Based on feminist literary theory and post-colonial perspectives, the analysis examines how Maitreyi Pushpa's narratives reflect the realities of Indian women, particularly those from marginalized communities, who face gender inequality, discrimination and subordination. grapples with issues of. The representation of women's organization and resistance in Maitreyi Pushpa's works is central to the examination. Through vivid characterization and compelling storytelling, Maitreyi Pushpa highlights the courage, resilience and determination of her female characters as they overcome societal barriers and confront oppressive structures. These characters emerge as symbols of defiance and empowerment, inspiring readers to question existing power structures and advocate for gender justice. Abstract in Hindi Language: मैत्रेयी पुष्पा की साहित्यिक कृतियाँ भारत के सामाजिक-सांस्कृतिक परिदृश्य में महिलाओं के अनुभवों, संघर्षों और आकांक्षाओं का गहन चित्रण करती हैं। इस शोध पत्र का उद्देश्य आलोचनात्मक विश्लेषण करना है कि मैत्रेयी पुष्पा अपनी साहित्यिक रचनाओं के माध्यम से महिलाओं के सशक्तिकरण संघर्ष का प्रतिनिधित्व कैसे करती हैं। यह मैत्रेयी पुष्पा के लेखन में महिला पात्रों के सूक्ष्म चित्रण पर प्रकाश डालता है, पितृसत्ता, सामाजिक मानदंडों और संस्थागत उत्पीड़न के खिलाफ उनकी लड़ाई के बहुमुखी आयामों की खोज करता है। नारीवादी साहित्यिक सिद्धांत और उत्तर-औपनिवेशिक दृष्टिकोण पर आधारित, विश्लेषण इस बात की जांच करता है कि कैसे मैत्रेयी पुष्पा की कथाएं भारतीय महिलाओं की वास्तविकताओं को प्रतिबिंबित करती हैं, विशेष रूप से हाशिए पर रहने वाले समुदायों से, जो लैंगिक असमानता, भेदभाव और अधीनता के मुद्दों से जूझती हैं। मैत्रेयी पुष्पा के कार्यों में महिला संगठन और प्रतिरोध का प्रतिनिधित्व ही परीक्षा का केंद्र है। ज्वलंत चरित्र-चित्रण और सम्मोहक कहानी कहने के माध्यम से, मैत्रेयी पुष्पा अपनी महिला पात्रों के साहस, लचीलेपन और दृढ़ संकल्प को उजागर करती है क्योंकि वे सामाजिक बाधाओं से गुजरती हैं और दमनकारी संरचनाओं का सामना करती हैं। ये पात्र अवज्ञा और सशक्तिकरण के प्रतीक के रूप में उभरते हैं, जो पाठकों को मौजूदा सत्ता संरचनाओं पर सवाल उठाने और लैंगिक न्याय की वकालत करने के लिए प्रेरित करते हैं। Keywords: साहित्यिक सिद्धांत, महिला सशक्तिकरण, नारीवादी साहित्य, सामाजिक बाधा, प्रतिनिधित्व, लैंगिक संघर्ष, भारतीय समाज।

Women’s Struggles for Empowerment in Bangladesh

Women have made substantial gains in health, education, and political representation in Bangladesh, which has been led by female prime ministers since 1991. Women play a key role in the garment industry, the country’s main export sector, and entrepreneurial ventures funded by microcredit loans have also boosted women’s empowerment. But entrenched patriarchal norms have pushed back against these changes, limiting women’s mobility, their presence in public spaces, their sexuality, and their reproductive choices.

Review: La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento, by Lorena V. Márquez

Review: <i>La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento</i>, by Lorena V. Márquez

HOPEFULNESS AND FRUSTRATION IN DOMESTIC LIFE IN MANJU KAPUR’S A MARRIED WOMEN

This paper attempts to bring new women in Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman taking into account the hopefulness and frustration in domestic life. With diverse cultures, histories, and distinct forms of ethics and values, the women’s question, despite essential solidarity, needs to be tackled about the socio-cultural circumstances. The lives of women who survived and struggled under the suppressive mechanism of a restricted society can be manifested in the novels of Kapur. She has written fiction focusing on the predicament of contemporary women particularly in their struggle for empowerment and independence from the male- chauvinistic social structure. Now “Woman Question” is no longer a problem limited to the condition of women within the family or their rights to equality with men in different facets of social life. It is part of the total, far broader question considering the direction of change that Indian society is making - social, political, economic, and the intellectual viewpoint and examination of that process.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

“Nomi Malone is what Las Vegas is all about!”: Phallic women in Showgirls

Showgirls (1995) was a high-budget, high-concept Hollywood movie that immediately bombed at the box office. Despised by audiences and critics, Showgirls later found an appreciative audience through late-night cult screenings in cinemas, drag shows, and in academic discourse on trash cinema. Considered lowbrow and sleazy due to its abundance of female nudity, Showgirls is reconsidered in this article. With its hyper-stylised format, considered visual construction, and campy performances, Showgirls, perhaps inadvertently, allows space for a queer female subjectivity through main character Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkeley); a complicated woman who embodies an intersection of gendered, sexual and classist oppressions that are archetypal of the fallen woman melodrama of classical Hollywood. &#x0D; By queering Nomi’s journey through the heteropatriarchy that is the Las Vegas showgirl scene, this article identifies themes of narcissism and doubling that enable Nomi to construct her phallic public performance of female sexuality when she is on the stage, in order to protect a tender, loving, yet naïve inner self that emerges with close interactions with her best (girl) friend Molly (Gina Ravera). Nomi’s sexualised stage-self -reflected and thrown back at her through omnipresent mirrors - reveals the sacrifices she must make to reach for her dreams but also to protect her fragile, yet expansive capacity for loving other women. Showgirls unveils the complex struggle for empowerment that women face in patriarchal societies yet, unsurprisingly, perhaps this narrative journey was instrumental in the film’s box office failure and categorisation into trash cinema.

Review: La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento, by Lorena V. Márquez

Review: <i>La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento</i>, by Lorena V. Márquez

Resisting the Oppressive Paternal Metaphor of God in Michèle Roberts’s "Impossible Saints"

The protagonist of Michèle Roberts’s Impossible Saints, Josephine, establishes a nonconformist convent for women who seek communion with God by following an unorthodox path of sensual spirituality. Impossible Saints intersperses Josephine’s story with a number of miniature narratives depicting fictional lives of saints, rewritten in a feminist manner, portraying both the female predicament in the patriarchally structured society and women’s struggle for empowerment in which they rebel against masculinist conventions. The article employs feminist thought, derived mainly from Julia Kristeva, to examine the way in which Roberts problematizes the relation of the Catholic Church to the position of women as well its concern with the human body. The bodily dimension of the divine, as proposed by Luce Irigaray, manifesting in the emancipatory communal experience of women in Josephine’s convent, greatly contrasts with the Catholic regulatory character of religiosity. The analysis also situates the patriarchal institution of the Church in the context of the Lacanian order of the symbolic and his notion of the Name-of-the-Father. It culminates in exploring the issue of the metaphor of God as seen through the traditional patriarchal frame which pictures God as masculine.

Transgressive Capabilities: Skill Development and Social Disruption in Rural India

Under what conditions might the acquisition of new skills challenge discriminatory social norms? We interrogate this question through reference to a study on the social impacts of an agricultural skill development scheme in rural India. We present detailed vignettes drawn from this study, which illustrate the social consequences of acquiring and utilizing skills that transgress local gender and caste norms. Engaging with themes from capabilities theory, we highlight how, although not all skills are transgressive, for some, acquiring “transgressive skills” not only enhanced life opportunities for themselves, but also did so for others within their communities. The form of their transgressions and their social consequences varied, however, based on their relative privilege and the operation of place-specific social norms and systems of oppression. We argue that transgressive skills might drive progressive social change, but distinguish between two types of transgression. Individual, brash, heroic transgressions against the status quo are more accessible to the relatively privileged, whereas marginalized people are more likely to engage in nested transgressions, which form part of long-term, collective struggles for empowerment. The latter, although often overlooked, might offer sustainable pathways to progressive change that reflect local aspirations.

La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento

In this valuable study, Lorena V. Márquez tells the story of the Chicana/o movement in the Sacramento Valley from the perspective of the “foot soldiers” who participated. Using oral histories of everyday people, La Gente examines their uneven political activism during the late 1960s and 1970s in Sacramento. Márquez focuses on a series of events in the region but begins with a historical overview exploring the experiences of Sacramento's Mexican community before the 1960s. Subsequent chapters explore the desegregation of a local elementary school, the organizing of cannery works, and the creation of Deganawidah Quetzalcoatl University, known as D-QU, a Sacramento community college. Márquez defines la gente, everyday common people, as “working-class folks, males and females, U.S. born and foreign born, documented and undocumented—whose lives were governed and anchored in work and the protection of their families” (p. 4). Márquez highlights everyday people's uneven activism in the Sacramento Valley. She argues everyday people engaged with the Chicana/o movement at critical junctures in their lives and through constant negotiated acts of defiance when they, their families, and their homes were at risk and became principal advocates for their rights (p. 4). Each chapter highlights everyday common people's political activism and the particular issues and needs that drove them into political action.La Gente argues that working-class people sought self-determination on their own terms, in often contradictory ways. Chapter 2 focuses on a battle over a local elementary school that highlighted a larger issue of self-determination for ethnic Mexican residents of Sacramento. Parents wanted to decide their children's educational future and went against civil rights leaders and school board officials who wanted to integrate the schools. Parents rejected desegregation plans because they believed members of the Sacramento school board based their plans on a false premise that the “white schools” were better than their local neighborhood school, Washington Elementary. Instead, parents wondered if their school did not better serve their children and their communities. Washington Elementary doubled as a community agency that provided medical care to students, adult education courses in the evening, and a park. Parents attacked the desegregation plans as unfair to their children. White students were not being bussed and removed from their environments. Second, parents did not want to further reinscribe their children's inferiority complex. Instead, parents demanded the school board either rebuild or rehabilitate Washington Elementary, and they wanted improvements across the system-wide curriculum. The Washington Elementary incident adds a nuanced layer to the historical understanding of civil rights, school segregation, and who supported integration and why. Márquez rightly points out the topic awaits further exploration.The parents of Washington Elementary were unsuccessful in stopping desegregation. But working-class, first-generation college students achieved a more lasting, but ultimately doomed, victory. In 1970, Native American and Chicana/o college students and community members worked together to create an institution of higher learning, D-QU, that let them have self-determination over their futures. Through D-QU, Márquez explores Chicana/os claims to an Indigenous identity and cross-ethnic alliances based on a shared history of conquest and oppression. Through its discussion of D-QU, La Gente challenges the view of the Civil Rights Movement as organized around a single race or ethnic group and instead highlights how Chicana/os built solidarity with Indigenous people. La Gente weaves the narrative of D-QU with a discussion about the meaning of mestizaje, la raza cosmica, and Chicanismo to explain the roots of D-QU's eventual closing in the 2000s.One small criticism of La Gente lies in its organization. At times, La Gente is disjointed and not a cohesive narrative of the Chicana/o movement in the Sacramento region. Was there no crossover between Chicana/os in the desegregation of Washington Elementary school and the cannery workers, or the larger issues of the community? The events all happened within a relatively brief window of time, but there was little interaction between the various actors in La Gente. Perhaps that is intentional, as so much of everyday people's experiences with activism are not always cohesive and easily followed. This is a minor issue that does not detract from a marvelous study of the Chicana/o movement in Sacramento that poses questions about self-determination, activism, and everyday people's political participation. La Gente is a significant contribution to the historiography of the Chicana/o movement.

Pakistan’s Rising Women Empowerment: A Mixed Methods Study

Pakistan has made visible progress in empowering women through education. Though enrollment of females in primary education is low, yet women have surpassed men in higher degree programs. Pakistani women reflect a positive picture of women empowerment by contributing to every walk of life. In the past two decades, when Pakistan was focusing on empowering women, a significant rise has been observed in domestic violence against women and suicide rate among them. Domestic violence and suicide attempt are crimes according to Pakistani laws. In the light of Social Disorganization Theory, the present research draws a unique connection of rising women empowerment with a clash of traditional ideals and modern approaches. It underscores the importance of the issue ignored by social scientists, civil society, and the government of Pakistan. The social disorganization theory describes the factors present in the surrounding environment responsible for the increased crime rate. The present study explores and discusses those factors in the societal struggle to maintain social ideals and modern approaches in parallel. This qualitative study employs a mixed-methods design and uses an in-depth literature review, close-ended questionnaires, and open-ended interviews to achieve the research objectives. The study randomly selects its sample (n=150) from different educational backgrounds and age brackets. While stressing transforming the societal perceptions, the study findings highlight the underlying problems and challenges women face in the struggle for empowerment. The study concludes that if women, being the “Social Fathers” of society, continue to suffer, it will bring catastrophic effects to the whole social fabric of Pakistan. Furthermore, the study provides limitations and directions for future research.

Women, Feminism and Politics in Post-Revolution Tunisia

During periods of flux generated by Tunisia's transition to democracy, all classes of women found the ‘political opportunities’ to push for change even if they did not necessarily share the same ambition or dream. The mobilisation, contestations, confrontations and struggle of Tunisian women in the post-revolution period alert us to the need to examine the factors behind this activism and the extent of its visibility. It is important to revisit the Tunisian women's movement in order to understand its interaction with other forms of power such as politics, religion, and class; as well as the extent to which such activism is a renegotiation of women’s identities and status in post-revolution Tunisia. Indeed, the extent to which the rise of Islamism and its conservative gender ideology can affect feminist movement activities has been one of the main issues of debate. The divide between Tunisian women - secularist and feminist versus Islamist women (Nahdhawiyat) begs to be explored. This divide can be understood as the expected materialisation of binaries that manifestly reveal the hard task of pursuing accountability of feminist movements regarding broader and universal feminist issues of epistemology, agenda, and ethics within the new local context. &#x0D; This article is an attempt to address the binary framings of secular/liberal/elitist/Westernised feminist movements against the re-emerging religious/indigenous/ethical and conservative discourse. It aims to shed light on the influence of such opposed frames and their impact on women’s struggles for empowerment, and the accountability of both state and non-state actors.

Significados del lugar/espacio, comunidad y empoderamiento desde una perspectiva de género

Este documento trata de los significados del lugar, los procesos de desplazamiento, la construcción de la comunidad y las luchas por el empoderamiento narradas por cinco mujeres afrocolombianas lideresas comunitarias en Cali, Colombia. La sección Reforma rural integral del acuerdo de paz firmado por el gobierno colombiano y las FARC-EP define el ‘lugar’ como un activo económico que lo restringe a su significado físico en contraste con las definiciones dadas por las mujeres quienes le añaden significados simbólicos y sociales.&#x0D; Tres preguntas de investigación guían este artículo: ¿Cuáles son los significados sociales y simbólicos dados por las cinco mujeres desplazadas afrocolombianas a los lugares que han habitado? ¿Cómo narran las mujeres su pertenencia a los diferentes lugares y comunidades, y sus luchas por establecer una nueva vida después del desplazamiento? ¿Cómo se integran el género y la etnia / raza en estas narraciones?&#x0D; A partir de la observación participante, entrevistas en profundidad y un análisis temático, fue posible demostrar cómo a través de luchas políticas individuales y colectivas, estas mujeres construyen sus roles dentro de las nuevas comunidades en Cali siguiendo o desafiando patrones de identidad de género. Lo que les permite crear un lugar para sí mismas, a través de intersecciones de género, raza/etnia, edad y familia, así como a través de la pérdida y la lucha.

Black Outlaws and the Struggle for Empowerment in Blaxploitation Cinema

This essay argues that the bad men tales in 1970s blaxploitation cinema were more than just a glorification of deviant behavior and Black outlaws. In spite of their flaws, these films were important because they served as microcosms of the struggle of Black men to achieve power, agency, and define their self-identity in an American society that had attempted to disenfranchise and emasculate them since slavery. These anti-heroes became alternative examples of Black resistance during and after the long Civil Rights movement.

Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908–1969

Book Review| July 01 2012 Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908–1969 Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908–1969. By Andrew J. Diamond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. xii + 396 pp. Maps, graphs, photos, illustrations, notes, and index. $60 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). Perry R. Duis Perry R. Duis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2012) 31 (4): 94–95. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.31.4.0094 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Perry R. Duis; Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908–1969. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2012; 31 (4): 94–95. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.31.4.0094 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

“I’ve Got Some Antique in Me”: The Discourse of Authenticity and Identity in the African American Blues Community in Austin, Texas

This essay draws on the author’s oral history work in the African American blues community in Austin, Texas, in order to examine how professional blues artists there understand and negotiate the concept of authenticity. More to the point, this essay explores the ways in which the narrators use the category of authenticity as a way to articulate their own identity. Through a close textual analysis of the interviews, it demonstrates how race, class, and lived experience are intimately tied to notions of authenticity in the blues and locates the ambiguity inherent in the narrators’ discourse at the center of a larger cultural struggle for empowerment and recognition in this historically marginalized community. Two songs by the musicians featured in this essay follow after the conclusion. Listening to these requires a means of accessing the audio files through hyperlinks. See “Instructions for Multimedia Reading of the OHR,” which follows the Editor’s Introduction at the front of the journal, for further explanation on how to access this article online.

Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public HousingFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond.

Book Review| October 01 2010 Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public HousingFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond. Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing, D. Bradford Hunt.Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond. Harold L. Platt Harold L. Platt Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) (2010) 103 (3-4): 387–397. https://doi.org/10.2307/41201295 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Harold L. Platt; Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public HousingFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond.. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 1 January 2010; 103 (3-4): 387–397. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41201295 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2010 The Illinois State Historical Society2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public HousingFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond.

Book Review| July 01 2010 Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public HousingFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond. Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing, D. Bradford Hunt.Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond. Harold L. Platt Harold L. Platt Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) (2010) 103 (2): 236–245. https://doi.org/10.2307/25701284 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Harold L. Platt; Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public HousingFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Beryl Satter.Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, Andrew J. Diamond.. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 1 January 2010; 103 (2): 236–245. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25701284 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2010 The Illinois State Historical Society2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969

Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969

Mean streets: Chicago youths and the everyday struggle for empowerment in the multiracial city, 1908-1969

List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Maps Introduction: Bringing Youths into the Frame 1. The Generation of 1919 2. Between School and Work in the Interwar Years 3. Hoodlums and Zoot-Suiters: Fear, Youth, and Militancy during Wartime 4. Angry Young Men: Race, Class, and Masculinity in the Postwar Years 5. Teenage Terrorism, Fighting Gangs, and Collective Action in the Era of Civil Rights 6. Youth and Power Epilogue: Somewhere over the Rainbow Notes Index