Inferiority Of Women Research Articles

La nobiltà et l'eccellenza delle donne, a treatise in response to I donneschi diffetti in the context of the debate on women

The idea of a woman has been devalued and painted as a filthy, cursed being for generations. Passi’s I donneschi diffetti is set in the context of the misogynist tradition which focuses on proving and arguing why the woman is a being that stands out for her inherent inferiority. Lucrezia Marinella, however, was able to change the misogynistic arguments of Passi and a whole tradition anchored to the Aristotelian thesis. Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide a comparative reading between two Venice-printed books, I donneschi diffetti (1599) by Giuseppe Passi and La nobiltà et l'educazione delle donne, co diffetti et mancamenti de gli huomini (1601) by Passi, Giuseppe (1603). Lucrezia Marinella. The vilification of women, common in literary, philosophical, and theological studies written in earlier centuries to reflect on women's inferiority, is understood from Passi's work, written as a treatise, the discursive genre of misogynist literature par excellence. In contrast to Passi's misogynistic treatise, Lucrezia Marinella's work, which is set in the querelle des femmes context, although also written in the form of a treatise, aims to highlight the superiority of women through the exercise of virtues. Marinella's work, which has the merit of responding to the misogyny of Passi's treatise, surpasses the preceding work in terms of literary quality, where rhetorical resources and exempla abound, based on a detailed argumentation of the merits of women.

Oppression Towards Main Female Characters in Rao’s Girls Burn Brighter

The perception of the women's inferiority in society has created significant issues in the form of oppression of women. Furthermore, literary works portrayed these issues to raise awareness because it has an important role as one of the means to address the issue of oppression against women. Shobha Rao's novel Girls Burn Brighter is a feminist literary work that highlights the oppression of women. This study aims to examine the oppression of main female characters as revealed in the novel through literary devices. This study used a sociological approach since the novel raise the social phenomena of female oppression which is examined through the perspective of feminist literary criticism. The researcher applies Iris Young's theory of oppression to explore the forms of oppression and Kimberly Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality to look out the factors of oppression experienced by main female characters. The results of this study found that the main female characters, namely Poornima and Savitha, experience oppression in the form of marginalization, exploitation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Their experiences of oppression manifest in the form of marginalization of job opportunity, sexual and labor exploitation, powerlessness to speak up, cultural imperialism of the dowry system, and physical and sexual violence. These forms of oppression are influenced by intersecting factors such as gender, social class, political power, skin color, and dominant culture. Keywords: oppression, intersectionality, feminist literary criticism

A Study of Feminine Identity Crisis in Anita Desai’s Fictional Work

This research delves into Anita Desai's literary exploration of the feminine identity crisis, examining how her novels depict women's battles against societal and familial restrictions. Through an intersectional feminist perspective, Desai's works, including Fire on the Mountain, Cry the Peacock, and Voices in the City, are analyzed to reveal the enduring perception of women's inferiority and their roles as sacrificial figures within the family structure. Employing a descriptive methodology and drawing from primary sources and socio-psychological frameworks, this study interprets Desai's portrayal of women's struggles for autonomy amidst societal pressures. Through thematic exploration and character analysis, it uncovers the nuances of female experiences, their quest for identity, and the entrenched influence of patriarchal norms. Ultimately, the research illuminates Desai's depiction of women's resilience and their journey toward emancipation in the face of systemic oppression.

Violence against women on Twitter in India: Testing a taxonomy for online misogyny and measuring its prevalence during COVID-19.

Online misogyny is a violation of women's digital rights. Empirical studies on this topic are however lacking, particularly in low- and middle- income countries. The current study aimed to estimate whether prevalence of online misogyny on Twitter in India changed since the pandemic. Based on prior theoretical work, we defined online misogyny as consisting of six overlapping forms: sexist abuses, sexual objectification, threatening to physically or sexually harm women, asserting women's inferiority, justifying violence against women, and dismissing feminist efforts. Qualitative analysis of a small subset of tweets posted from India (40,672 tweets) substantiated this definition and taxonomy for online misogyny. Supervised machine learning models were used to predict the status of misogyny across a corpus of 30 million tweets posted from India between 2018 and 2021. Next, interrupted time series analysis examined changes in online misogyny prevalence, before and during COVID-19. Qualitative assessment showed that online misogyny in India existed most in the form of sexual objectification and sexist abusive content, which demeans women and shames them for their presumed sexual activity. Around 2% of overall tweets posted from India between 2018 and 2021 included some form of misogynistic content. The absolute volume as well as proportion of misogynistic tweets showed significant increasing trends after the onset of COVID-19, relative to trends prior to the pandemic. Findings highlight increasing gender inequalities on Twitter since the pandemic. Aggressive and hateful tweets that target women attempt to reinforce traditional gender norms, especially those relating to idealized sexual behavior and framing of women as sexual beings. There is an urgent need for future research and development of interventions to make digital spaces gender equitable and welcoming to women.

Depiction of Women in Arabic Proverbs: Pragma-Discoursal Analysis

This study investigates women's representation in Arabic proverbs, specifically those from Palestinian, Omani, Yamani, and Sudanese cultures, to answer the following questions: (1)Do these proverbs usually depict women as having low status? (2)What linguistic techniques are used in these proverbs the most frequently? (3)How is the intersection between critical discourse analysis and pragmatics manifested in these proverbs? (4)What are the most common character traits attributed to women in these proverbs? The study applied a descriptive method in its analysis of 106 Arabic proverbs from the Sudanese, Omani, Yamani and Palestinian cultures. First, it was determined whether all of the proverbs reflected poor status for women. Second, a linguistic configuration was performed in addition to focusing on the functions of pragmatics and discourse analysis to identify the most prominent linguistic and pragmatic patterns and their associated interpretations. Third, the numbers and percentages of positive and negative traits were calculated. The study comes to the conclusion most of the Arabic proverbs depict low status for women. Lexical cohesion, rhyme, lexemes and feminine anthroponyms are the most common linguistic tactics utilized in proverbs. Negative proverbs are more common than positive ones in their depiction of women's representation, and the common attributes attributed to women in proverbs are being unfocused, wicked and ill-natured. In fact, this study demonstrates how the language of proverbs reflects women's inferiority compared to men in earlier cultures.

Gender Inequality in Academia: Are Women Inferior in Workplace

Gender Inequality in Academia: Are Women Inferior in Workplace

Female Personifications and Masculine Forms: Gender, Armour and Allegory in the Habsburg–Valois Conflicts of Sixteenth‐Century Europe

AbstractThis article examines the visual and material culture of sixteenth‐century elite ceremonial armours and the paradoxes inherent in using images of women to decorate them between 1525 and 1550. It argues that foreign invading forces and their allies exploited or inverted traditional gender binaries associated with the classical and humanist iconography of the Italian Renaissance, particularly its female allegorical forms, to visually signify power relationships between combatants during the Italian Wars. Rather than simply embodying masculinity, elaborate ceremonial armours with images of women are revealing of both ideals of masculinity and femininity during times of war. These portrayals were part of wider conversations about gender and power, about the strength and weaknesses of women, and, ultimately, women's inferior status to men, which were utilised in allegorical forms to make claims to authority on these elite forms of male dress.

Defining ‘woman': A governmentality analysis of how protective policies are created in elite women's sport

Women's sport remains a contested realm that frequently features standards and regulations premised on women's inferiority and physiological distinctions from men. In response to these purported sex-based differences, a range of protective policies have been implemented to ostensibly ensure women's safety and health, defend “fair competition” in women's sport, and/or prevent the violation of social and medical boundaries that define who is a “woman.” Yet, protective policies encompass a multitude of rationales and strategies, demonstrating the malleability of “protection” in terms of who is protected and why. In this article, I draw from Michel Foucault's theory of “governmentality” to investigate the nuances of protective policies, especially their placed importance on sex differences. To do so, I examine three case studies: World Athletics’ (WA) 2019 female eligibility policy, WA's 2019 transgender eligibility policy, and the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) consensus statement on relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S). Using document texts and semi-structured interviews with eight scientists involved with developing the case studies, I find that protective policies are developed through messy and often contentious processes that selectively draw from varying knowledges and discourses. This then culminates in contrasting methods of defining, protecting, and governing women athletes and their bodies.

The Kreutzer Sonata

Women's inferiority persists, particularly in patriarchal societies. In Russia, women have always been treated as second-class citize (Placeholder1)ns to men. As a result, because it is a system that already exists in society, women's inferiority is the fundamental problem of inequality for women in Russia. The novel The Kreutzer Sonata explores the inferiority of female characters in nineteenth-century Russia, where the church's influence is still strong. The aims of the research were to examine about women inferiority and struggle in patriarchal society as portrayed in the novel The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy. The data was collected using the following methods: 1) attentively reading the novel to determine which sections featured inferiority and struggle, and 2) collecting notes and marking the facts of inferiority in the marriage and society. 3) categorizing; and 4) analyzing. Based on the research, it was discovered that there were two major forms of women's inferiority: 1) the feeling of powerlessness in decision of marriages. This powerlessness happens to both the mother and the daughters. 2) being subjected to discriminatory treatment, such as a lack of freedom and mobility based only on sexuality, as well as physical abuse and loss of inheritance.

The Potential for Liberation Feminism in Hindu Practices and its Patriarchal Origins

Hinduism is accused of suppressing its women devotees, despite a history suggesting a matriarchal approach. Over the years, original knowledge surrounding religious practices have been lost due to misinterpretation, misinformation and autonomy over said knowledge by certain groups. The purpose of this essay is to explore the various practices that accuse Hinduism of being anti-feminist, and to identify their origins to understand the role that both culture and religious doctrine played in promoting women's inferiority, as well as which had greater influence. Previous research relies heavily on scriptural understanding and secondary data analysis, despite the fact that overreliance on scriptures is one of the major contributors to the spread of false information regarding the divorce between the intentions of the religious doctrine and subsequent traditions and customs. I interviewed practitioners of the religion coming from various backgrounds and used the primary data to theorise the origination of women's oppression and means to reduce its continuation. The understanding behind religious practices such as Sati, Pativrata and taboos surrounding female priesthood and menstruation yield results that attribute the patriarchy to factors that were not intrinsic to Hinduism. Hence, my findings conclude that women’s original knowledge of the fundamental tenets of Hinduism understood as anti-feminist facilitate their empowerment. Therefore, furthering original knowledge of ‘sexist ideals’ can increase the potential for liberation feminism for Hindu women by reducing the prevalence of conservative practices.

Unrelenting Teenage Pregnancies in South Africa: Is Falling Pregnant a Matter of Choice or an Accident?

Notwithstanding, the many campaigns, print and electronic media advertisements to disseminate information on the problems associated with teenage pregnancy, the tide of teenage pregnancies in South Africa seems unrelenting. The life of many young women is disrupted as they are the ones who bear the brunt of teenage pregnancy than their male counterparts. This study aims at applying the choice theory to explain the reasons behind the relentless teenage pregnancy in South Africa despite the availability of information on the contraceptives and the daunting responsibility of being a parent prematurely. Qualitative research approach was used to guide the collection and analysis of the data. Data was collected through the use of face to face interviews and content analysis was used to analyse the data. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to select the respondents from the entire population. A total number of 22 respondents were interviewed. The study indicated that young people continue to fall into the trap of pregnancy despite the availability of contraceptives and information on safe sex. According to the study young people young women do not fall pregnant out of their own will rather they are pushed by social pressures such as patriarchy, lack of social support from their families and communities which they live and also poverty. Young women's inferiority complex also leads them to subdue to the pressures of getting pregnant. There is a desperate need for a multi-prolonged strategy by different stakeholders to deal with unrelenting teenage pregnancy in South Africa.

Perempuan Pencari Nafkah Selama Pandemi Covid-19

The perception of women as the number two role in society continues to this day. This knowledge has an impact on women's inferiority and subordination. In addition, the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic have increased the workload for women at home. The workload for women has increased threefold, including earning a living in it. The woman breadwinner in Kampung Kue Rungkut Lor II experienced this during the pandemic. This article uses qualitative research methods and a phenomenological approach, in order to obtain data on the quality of life in the Kampung Kue Rungkut Lor II community. The purpose of this study was to determine descriptively the condition of women breadwinners during the pandemic. As a result, the “Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar” (PSBB) affected the economic conditions in the Kampung Kue Rungkut Lor II community, and women also experienced three times more workload than men at home. The pandemic has actually added to the exploitation and oppression of women in the Kampung Kue Rungkut Lor II community. Therefore, it is necessary to have further research on the quality of life of women breadwinners in Kampung Kue Rungkut Lor II before the pandemic to find out the differences in the quality of life of women breadwinners in the same location.

Romance's Rivals: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction by Talia Schaffer

Reviewed by: Romance's Rivals: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction by Talia Schaffer Christine L. Krueger ROMANCE'S RIVALS: FAMILIAR MARRIAGE IN VICTORIAN FICTION, by Talia Schaffer. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 352 pp. $69.00 cloth; $67.99 ebook. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."1 Unlike traditional love sonneteers, Elizabeth Barrett Browning does not ask "why do I love thee?" so that she can proceed to a list of her beloved's virtues. Instead, she is interested in examining her own diverse and multiple affective states—how she loves. Romance, if it makes her list at all, is merely one among many ways to love. Talia Schaffer's Romance's Rivals: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction reminds us of this point so that we can appreciate the affective variety of marriage plots in nineteenth-century fiction, including works by Jane Austen, the Brontës, Charlotte Yonge, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In Schaffer's view, several approaches to literary criticism in the past few decades have attempted to narrow the meaning of desire to sexual attraction and thereby limit what constitutes authentic reasons for marriage. This critical strategy undermines narrative advocacy for forms of desire much better suited to women achieving happiness under the legal and economic conditions of the nineteenth century. As relative creatures, women survived by cultivating affective ties with family, friends, and benefactors. Ideally, husbands would be drawn from these networks, both to ensure the men were reliable and to allow women to preserve their support systems. Drawing her evidence from narratives focalized by female characters, Schaffer demonstrates the range of women's marital considerations and desires, as well as agency and constraints. She develops her argument over topical chapters, including "Historicizing Marriage," "Neighbor Marriage," "Cousin Marriage," "Disability Marriage," and "Vocational Marriage." The most important contribution Romance's Rivals makes to current critical discourse may be to represent the wide array of scholarship from the past two decades that resists master narratives in favor of the variation and nuance in Victorian marriage plots. These critics include Mary Jean Corbett, Claudia L. Johnson, Elsie B. Michie, Kelly Hager, Sharon Marcus, Kathy Psomiades, and Martha Stoddard Holmes, among others who have maintained a healthy skepticism regarding the monolithic tendencies of psychoanalytic and Foucauldian-influenced accounts of desire. [End Page 452] Schaffer's study returns to two influential 1987 works of criticism: Joseph Allen Boone's Tradition Counter Tradition: Love and the Form of Fiction and Nancy Armstrong's Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. The former Schaffer describes as "the definitive book on the marriage plot in British history" (p. 43). The latter, Schaffer faults for using "'the history of sexuality' to mean 'the history of marriage,'" a conflation of what she considers to be "profoundly different fields" (p. 22). She complains of literary critics who merged an unnuanced version of companionate marriage from Lawrence Stone's 1977 The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 with a Foucauldian-inflected hermeneutics of suspicion in order to produce a teleological narrative of desire that was reductive and anachronistic. This move exacerbated the erasure of women's agency inherent in Ian Watt's equation of the novel's rise with that of an autonomous liberal subject in The Rise of the Novel (1957). Whereas Boone's interest lay in examining how novels elaborated a new idea of romantic love, Schaffer cautions against any tendency to infer that romantic love is the culmination of a teleological history of the novel. This caveat emerges from more recent historical and anthropological research, feminist scholarship, disability studies, and queer studies. But it is also worth noting that Schaffer is recovering a strain of scholarship that never bought into this reductive thinking, for example, that of Ruth Perry, whose Novel Relations (2004) she often cites. I would suggest that Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract (1988) be acknowledged as well. Published the year after Boone's and Armstrong's books, The Sexual Contract demonstrates that social contract theory depended upon an unacknowledged sexual contract—the marriage contract—with the result that women's inferior legal status became a constitutive feature of...

Made in Movieland: Imitation, Agency, and Girl Movie Fandom in the 1910s

This article employs the concept of imitation as a lens through which the author explores the complex relationship established between the fledgling Hollywood film industry and the first generation of girls to be culturally construed as “adolescent” and “movie fans” in the US. Interlacing early twentieth-century psychological literature, sociological studies, and materials published in film fan magazines, industry trade publications, and general newspapers with girls' own fan letters and photographs, the author maps the ways in which imitation became a source of agency and pleasure for movie-loving girls during the 1910s—a decade when popular and scientific sources understood imitative behavior as both a mark of women's intellectual inferiority and a product of female adolescent arrestment. The main goal of this piece is thus to show that adolescent girls contributed significantly to the implementation of Hollywood's star system. This article also analyzes the ambivalent modes of representation and address journalists directed at girl spectators and how such modes evidenced the film industry's growing dependence on young female audiences, as well as the broader patriarchal anxiety over girls' newfound public autonomy, spectatorial pleasure, and homoerotic identification.

Development and validation of the Patriarchal Beliefs Scale.

The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a conceptually and psychometrically solid measure for patriarchal beliefs in samples of U.S. American adults from diverse demographic and geographic backgrounds. In Study 1, we identified 3 correlated factors of the Patriarchal Beliefs Scale (PBS) in data collected from the Internet (N = 279): Institutional Power of Men, Inferiority of Women, and Gendered Domestic Roles. In Study 2, data collected from the Internet (N = 284) supported both an oblique 3-factor structure and a bifactor structure of the PBS, through confirmatory factor analyses. Construct validity of the PBS was supported in relation to other gender-related measures. The PBS was correlated in expected directions with modern sexism, antifeminist attitudes, and egalitarian attitudes toward women. In Study 3, we examined measurement invariance across gender by using combined data from Study 1 and Study 2. All 3 factors of the oblique 3-factor model indicated measurement invariance, whereas the general factor represented in the bifactor model indicated nonequivalence. Mean differences in patriarchal beliefs were found for such demographic variables as gender, sexual orientation, education, and social class. Recommendations for using the PBS, as well as implications for research and practice, are discussed.

School leaders’ gender strategies

This article analyses interview data from 54 women school principals in South Africa to explore how women position their identities in relation to their gender, ethnicity and other characteristics. While grounded in their own context, the women’s strategies resonate with those of women in many parts of the world. Five strategies are discerned: transforming the value of low-status identities, asserting a valued identity, negating stigmatised characteristics, denying disadvantage, and accepting women's inferiority. It is suggested that each may bring benefit to the individual but may also further embed disadvantage: that women are caught in a web of discrimination. It is argued that we do not sufficiently understand the complexity and balance of positive and negative effects of individual positioning on principals’ lives and on wider structural change. The impact of action may not be captured by simplistic cause and effect analysis but appears to be both embedding sexism further and leveraging limited gains.

Frontline Farmers, Backline Sources: Women as a tertiary voice in climate change coverage

Gender meaning construction and interpretation, which suggest women's inferiority to men, is deeply rooted in social-cultural signs and codes drawn from traditional contexts. In Uganda, girls start to face this reality at an early age. Among low income earning families, very few are enrolled in school, thus as they grow up they suffer from invisibility created by low education and income levels. This paper notes how such gender realities in the media have been investigated in other parts of the world and that the general thesis has been that the media have “marginalized women in the public sphere.” Turning to the position of women as both sources and reporters, in Uganda this area of inquiry has been given little scholarly attention. To fill that gap, this essay draws upon feminist media theory to help contextualize findings obtained through content analysis (N = 671) data drawn from two Ugandan newspapers. Using climate change as a coverage issue, since 56 percent of women in Uganda are farmers, the results of this study show that the gender gap in Uganda is highly pronounced, with women as sources ranked third in importance after men and anonymous sources.

Transformation of Women's Mass Sport in the Process of Urbanisation in Contemporary China

Since the 1980s, China has initiated a new era of urbanisation. Urbanisation, like a social engine, has driven a dramatic change in the way that people take part in sport. The particular focus of this article is to explore the impact of urban development on the systematic transformation of women's sport at the grass-roots level. Based on Riess's perspective of the relationship between cities and sport, and socialist feminist's points of view concerning female sport, this research applied a qualitative research paradigm using an in-depth interview method to examine the major social forces which stimulated the rise of women's mass sport in urban China. It is argued that urban development has provided Chinese women with a governmental guarantee, comparatively free individual choices and diversified opportunities to pursue their own interests and fulfilment in and through sport. Generally speaking, Chinese women's mass sport has improved. However, there are still limitations within the institutional structure, physical structure and value systems of the urban society, as well as its sport subsystem to support the sustainable development of women's mass sport. Ideas concerning women's inferiority and gender inequality still remain during this transformation.

“It Is Hardly News that Women Are Oppressed”: Sexism, Activism, and Charlie

I first met Charlie in 1961 when I was a teaching assistant in the Department of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This was a rather odd position for me because I was in my second year of graduate school in the department of experimental psychology at Harvard. This arrangement, however, illustrates the kind of discrimination against women in experimental psychology during the early 1960s (as well as earlier and later). I will briefly outline why I was working at MIT to contrast the attitudes and behaviors of the Harvard faculty with Charlieʼs kindness and support of women. Sexism was particularly virulent at Harvard. There were, of course, no female faculty members and only two female postdoctoral fellows during the six years I studied there. The first week I arrived, Richard Herrnstein, the director of the graduate program, called a meeting of the first-year graduate students and announced that only one in two men were expected to obtain their PhD and only one of four women. I do not know if the percentages were correct. However, in an examination of PhD recipients during the time the program existed as a separate department (1951–1973), 99 men received their PhD and only 14 women. These figures might help explain why I was supervising a very large class in introductory psychology at MIT. The Harvard department had been founded by E. G. Boring, who, like his mentor Titchener, did not believe that women should be experimental psychologists (Furumoto, 1988). Boring did not believe that women could survive the grueling 80-hr week prescribed for scholarly success at Harvard. Men who survived the very difficult first-year curriculum were routinely offered research assistantships with one or another of the faculty members. Because they did not believe that women would go on to do productive scholarship and enhance their mentorsʼ reputations, women were not offered research positions. When I passed my first yearʼs classes and requested financial aid, they “solved” the problem by making an arrangement with Hans-Lukas Teuber who was starting a neurosciencefocused psychology program at MIT and did not yet have enough graduate students to help with the undergraduate program. I still do not know who paid for this, but I got my tuition and a stipend as well. It proved to be an opportunity to get to know and work with Charlie. Professor Teuber was very supportive when I told him I was interested in physiological psychology and introduced me to Charlie and Steve Chorover, who were studying the frontal cortex of monkeys at that time. They allowed me to assist in operations and taught me how to use stereotaxic devices. When I decided to do some research in a related area, the only animals available in the Harvard laboratory were pigeons and rats. Charlie and Steve believed that the caudate nucleus of lower mammals had some of the functions of the frontal cortex in primates so I began to examine the effect of caudate nucleus lesions on the ability of rats to make rapid temporal and spatial shifts. This allowed me to use sophisticated operant conditioning techniques available in Skinnerʼs lab. Harvard did not have any objection to this combination of physiological psych and operant conditioning, and Charlie became my more or less official advisor. The transition to official thesis advisor was made easy because Charlie joined the Harvard experimental psychology program as an assistant professor in 1964. I tried to convince him not to do so because I believed he would be incompatible with its sexist and politically conservative faculty. By the time I was finishing up my doctoral dissertation in 1966, Charlie and Dick Herrnstein (another member of my doctoral committee because of the operant techniques I used) were barely on speaking terms. Some of you may remember Herrnstein as the coauthor of The Bell Curve, which argued that intelligence was genetically determined and underlay social class as well as racial differences (Herrnstein & Murray, 1973, 1994). Charlie was very opposed to such social Darwinist theories and later opposed Herrnsteinʼs giving a lecture at Princeton. On the basis of the autobiography that Charlie wrote for the American Psychologist when he received APAʼs gold medal for achievement in science (Gross, 2005), some might argue that Charlieʼs progressive beliefs were related to his fatherʼs progressive politics. Ironically, Herrnstein came from a very similar background. He Brandeis University

Between Feminism and Orthodox Judaism: Resistance, Identity, and religious Change in Israel by Yael Israel-Cohen (review)

Reviewed by: Between Feminism and Orthodox Judaism: Resistance, Identity, and religious Change in Israel by Yael Israel-Cohen Margalit Shilo Bar-Ilan Between Feminism and Orthodox Judaism: Resistance, Identity, and religious Change in Israel Yael Israel-Cohen . Brill: Leiden, Boston, 2012. 149 pp. The main aim of Yael Israel-Cohen's book, the product of a PhD dissertation at Tel Aviv University, is to present the relatively new phenomenon of Israeli modern Orthodox women who struggle with the oxymoron of Jewish Orthodoxy and feminism. The author is a sociologist who analyzes these women's religious conceptions, identity formation, and various strategies for solving their inner conflict, as adherents to a patriarchal religion who resist its patriarchal nature. Israel-Cohen bases her study on theoretical writings concerning the question of religions and feminism and on 45 interviews with men and women who are active members of some innovative organizations who deal with this oxymoron. The book is well written and the many citations from the interviews are illuminating. I have to admit that since I am both orthodox and feminist, I was among the interviewees. Moreover, I was an active member of the most prominent organization which is dealt with extensively in this book—Kolech—and I also published a number of papers discussing Kolech. For someone who is not acquainted with this topic, Israel-Cohen's book is an eye opener. In her introduction the author discusses the nature of religious change in modern times. It sheds light on Jewish Orthodoxy's stagnation or sometimes even its retreat concerning its attitude towards the status of women. The author explains that the rabbis' attitude towards women is not only a result of halachic considerations, but not less so seeing women's inferior halachic status as a symbol of adherence to the Orthodox way of life. Modern Orthodox women dwell in a paradoxical world. They are considered equal partners in the secular world, but in their religious public sphere, they are considered inferior. How can they bridge the gap which lies between their two worlds? The author focuses mainly on the female voice, and on the ideas and actions which women developed in order to be able to live in their religious Orthodox world, while trying to reshape it. The book describes new egalitarian synagogues, new institutions which promote women's Talmudic learning, new professions, like halachic consultants and female advocates in the religious courts, and above all, a new women's organization, Kolech, (your voice). Kolech's aim is to solve problems, like those of deserted women (agunot), prenuptial agreements, and many other issues including the problem of Orthodox women's right to practice as rabbis. Most of the activists mentioned in the research are learned women who based their demands on a halachic basis. Israel-Cohen points out [End Page 145] their two strategies: passive resistance, which tries to avoid clashes with the rabbis, and active resistance, which causes some harsh clashes with the rabbinic establishment. Both strategies have brought about some desired outcomes. Passive resistance raised the consciousness of men and women alike to women's agony at being looked down at. Active resistance was instrumental in founding new creative ways to introduce equality into Orthodox rituals. Perhaps the best known achievement is the egalitarian synagogue named Shira Chadasha (a new song), in which women take part in reading the Torah for all the congregation together, men and women. This raised a lot of controversy, but it also attracted a few hundred followers and was the trailblazer of around twenty more similar synagogues around the world. Israel-Cohen concludes that both strategies, the passive and the active, were influential in promoting women's equality in the modern Orthodox world. The author asks, why do these feminist women cling to Orthodoxy, even though they completely negate its patriarchal basis? The interviewees admitted that their attachment to their Orthodox community and their attachment to their Orthodox way of life outweighed their feminism. Moreover, they explained that their wish totransform Orthodoxy was conceived by them as a way of Tikkun Olam, of improving the world. This research's interesting conclusion is that analyzing the issue of Orthodoxy and feminism shows the emerging...