Women's March Research Articles

Review: Dark Space: Architecture, Representation, Black Identity, by Mario Gooden

Mario Gooden. Dark Space: Architecture, Representation, Black Identity New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016, 144 pp., 21 color and 26 b/w illus. $20, ISBN 9781941332139 “Identity is passe.” It was 2002, and the words stung. As an undergraduate applying to doctoral programs, I was searching for the vocabulary I needed to talk about the issues in design that were important to me. Identity, I determined, was one of them. The words came from a senior scholar I respected at a program I was pursuing, and suddenly what I envisioned as my academic trajectory seemed trivial and faddish. However, in the current political climate, with the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges , the recent campaign of the first female candidate of a major party for the U.S. presidency, increased xenophobia and Islamophobia, and the continued visibility of grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter and the 2017 Women's March on Washington, it has become clear that identity is anything but passe. Mario Gooden takes on the issue of identity in architecture and wrestles with the notion of subjectivity throughout Dark Space . For him, how design contends with, reflects, directs, and responds to individual and collective identities—historical, present, and future—is an issue of utmost concern. The centering of identity—viewed through the lens of investigating subjectivity—within this design discourse is both paramount and timely. This book is one of only a few texts that deal with the history, theory, and criticism of the question of an African American architectural tradition.1 Most texts that emphasize race in relation to design are concerned with the historical consequences of inequity in the social construction of race, and how it has affected individuals and communities.2 Other texts address the interpretation of race, either in museum and monument design or in historic preservation.3 Finally, some texts strive to recognize the contribution of individual African American architects in an attempt to elevate their status and, perhaps, even make …

Scientists join massive protest against Trump

Researchers at Women's March in Washington DC defend their work as US president takes office.

Postelection Angst Spurs Some Women Scientists to Ally and Act

An advocacy group for women scientists has formed in reaction to the contentious 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and expects to participate in the Women's March on Washington this weekend.

The Women's March on Washington: Words from an Organizer: An Interview with Mrinalini Chakraborty

Feminist Studies 43, no. 1. © 2017 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 223 ashwini tambe The Women’s March on Washington: Words from an Organizer An Interview with Mrinalini Chakraborty The Women’s March on January 21, 2017, has been heralded as the largest single-day synchronized global mass mobilization ever. While estimates of the numbers of those who rallied that day vary, even the most conservative guesses are that over five million people turned out on streets in more than 673 marches around the globe. For a long time since the march, I have been mulling over how this event was organized. Who were the people behind the scenes pulling this massive effort together? How did they coordinate it and with what kinds of help? What did they know about each other, and what did they agree on? I was especially attuned to questions of power and difference : did the organizers come to an understanding of a common agenda, and how did they do so? When I reached out to organizers of the march—I sent a group email to the list of chairs named as organizers on the march website—the person who responded was Mrinalini Chakraborty, Head of Field Operations and Strategy at the Women’s March. After several emails, one day in early April 2017, we connected over the phone for an interview. Here are excerpts from our conversation. —Ashwini Tambe Ashwini Tambe: What do you see as the major successes of the event? Mrinalini Chakraborty: There are several successes to celebrate, both with the January 21 marches and with the larger movement. The Women’s 1. Ashwini Tambe is the Editorial Director of Feminist Studies and an associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.  News and Views March movement emerged very much as a spontaneous groundswell. But within the first three or so days the organizers—most of whom were complete strangers to each other—came together with a very clear vision. Our goal was to galvanize the nation through rapid mass mobilization led by women, to turn the fear and desolation that people felt as a result of the elections into direct, positive action that makes a statement : we will not normalize the toxic, divisive rhetoric of the election cycle, and we vow to do everything in our power and come together as a global movement to stand up for and protect the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. It is also a point of personal pride that the Women’s March movement was able to activate and mobilize hundreds of thousands of firsttime activists, those who had never taken part in political action or activism in general. We are excited that we have created an entry point for millions of people around the globe to take initiative in their local politics, to stand up to social injustices that they see in their local communities , and to get connected with organizations—both old and new— that are doing vital work in their areas of interest. Also, it was no small feat that in eleven weeks we mounted a global event on a scale that has never been seen before—the largest synchronized one-day global mass mobilization in US history, possibly in human history. Many on the left and center-left have said that the Women’s March was a turning point in the current sociopolitical climate, a reset button of sorts, where people took to the streets on the very first day of this current administration to send a loud and clear message: Hear Our Voice! While numbers are important and impressive, it was also essential for us that there be substance to the Women’s March movement. The policy platform, the Unity Principles, of the Women’s March has been heralded as one of the most unapologetically progressive, comprehensive, and inclusive to ever come out of a movement that encompasses such a diverse, intersectional, and intergenerational demographic. AT: Describe the origins of the march. We read in the early days about the conflict over the name of the march. Tell the story from your perspective. MC: The night of the election, on November 8, Teresa Shook...

The Women's March on Washington: Words from an Organizer: An Interview with Mrinalini Chakraborty

Feminist Studies 43, no. 1. © 2017 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 223 ashwini tambe The Women’s March on Washington: Words from an Organizer An Interview with Mrinalini Chakraborty The Women’s March on January 21, 2017, has been heralded as the largest single-day synchronized global mass mobilization ever. While estimates of the numbers of those who rallied that day vary, even the most conservative guesses are that over five million people turned out on streets in more than 673 marches around the globe. For a long time since the march, I have been mulling over how this event was organized. Who were the people behind the scenes pulling this massive effort together? How did they coordinate it and with what kinds of help? What did they know about each other, and what did they agree on? I was especially attuned to questions of power and difference : did the organizers come to an understanding of a common agenda, and how did they do so? When I reached out to organizers of the march—I sent a group email to the list of chairs named as organizers on the march website—the person who responded was Mrinalini Chakraborty, Head of Field Operations and Strategy at the Women’s March. After several emails, one day in early April 2017, we connected over the phone for an interview. Here are excerpts from our conversation. —Ashwini Tambe Ashwini Tambe: What do you see as the major successes of the event? Mrinalini Chakraborty: There are several successes to celebrate, both with the January 21 marches and with the larger movement. The Women’s 1. Ashwini Tambe is the Editorial Director of Feminist Studies and an associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.  News and Views March movement emerged very much as a spontaneous groundswell. But within the first three or so days the organizers—most of whom were complete strangers to each other—came together with a very clear vision. Our goal was to galvanize the nation through rapid mass mobilization led by women, to turn the fear and desolation that people felt as a result of the elections into direct, positive action that makes a statement : we will not normalize the toxic, divisive rhetoric of the election cycle, and we vow to do everything in our power and come together as a global movement to stand up for and protect the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. It is also a point of personal pride that the Women’s March movement was able to activate and mobilize hundreds of thousands of firsttime activists, those who had never taken part in political action or activism in general. We are excited that we have created an entry point for millions of people around the globe to take initiative in their local politics, to stand up to social injustices that they see in their local communities , and to get connected with organizations—both old and new— that are doing vital work in their areas of interest. Also, it was no small feat that in eleven weeks we mounted a global event on a scale that has never been seen before—the largest synchronized one-day global mass mobilization in US history, possibly in human history. Many on the left and center-left have said that the Women’s March was a turning point in the current sociopolitical climate, a reset button of sorts, where people took to the streets on the very first day of this current administration to send a loud and clear message: Hear Our Voice! While numbers are important and impressive, it was also essential for us that there be substance to the Women’s March movement. The policy platform, the Unity Principles, of the Women’s March has been heralded as one of the most unapologetically progressive, comprehensive, and inclusive to ever come out of a movement that encompasses such a diverse, intersectional, and intergenerational demographic. AT: Describe the origins of the march. We read in the early days about the conflict over the name of the march. Tell the story from your perspective. MC: The night of the election, on November 8, Teresa Shook...

Linguistic Anthropology at the Women's Marches

Anthropology NewsVolume 58, Issue 1 p. e289-e298 January/February Online ContentFree Access Linguistic Anthropology at the Women's Marches Anna M. Babel, Anna M. BabelSearch for more papers by this author Anna M. Babel, Anna M. BabelSearch for more papers by this author First published: 14 June 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/AN.315AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume58, Issue1Special Issue: FuturesJanuary/February 2017Pages e289-e298 RelatedInformation

The Crowd

In the essay, “The Crowd,” TJ Boisseau reflects on the physical experience of participating in the 2017 Women's March and finds inspiration in the nature and behavior of the crowd that gathered in Washington, D.C. that day.

J20 Art Strike

In early December 2016, a call for an Art Strike on Inauguration Day, in league with other J20 demonstrations and in solidarity with the Women's March the next day, began to circulate. With graphics that echoed the 1970 New York Artist's Strike Against Racism, Sexism, Repression, and War, it urged individuals, galleries, museums, art schools, and other cultural spaces to engage for the day in “an act of non-compliance” with the Trump regime. “Like any tactic,” the call explained, “this call is not an end in itself, but rather an intervention that will ramify into the future. It is not a strike against art, theater, or any other cultural form. It is an invitation to motivate these activities anew, to reimagine these spaces as places where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced.” The full statement by the anonymous organizers of the J20 Art Strike, first released on e-flux, is reprinted here.

Introduction

Introduction Jacqueline Ellis and Ellen Gruber Garvey In recent years, government policy in the United States has increasingly defined education's purpose as preparing students for the workplace. In 2014, President Barack Obama typified this line of thinking in remarks that questioned the value of studying disciplines that do not align with specific careers: [A] lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career. But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree—I love art history. So I don't want to get a bunch of emails from everybody. I'm just saying you can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four-year college education as long as you get the skills and the training that you need. (Jaschik, "Obama") Obama's comments were criticized for their dismissive attitude toward the liberal arts—a perspective more commonly associated with Republican politicians—and for his reinforcement of policies that have led to corporatized, routinized, test score–oriented approaches to education that require elementary school children to be "college and career ready." At the same time, Obama's words suggest that the liberal arts—the study of literature, history, art, and philosophy—are unnecessary for young people who might be better suited to traditionally working-class occupations. His point implies that education that does not funnel students into a specific career should be accessible only to a privileged few. As schools narrow their purpose, they increase educational inequality. Public schools in poorer areas increasingly focus only on subjects that are assessed in standardized tests. In one example, in 2015, Frankie Adao, the father of an eighth grader in a public school in Newark, New Jersey, posted his son's schedule on social media. The schedule showed only three class periods in a week [End Page 1] that were not dedicated to math, STEM, or English language arts. Parents from suburban school districts and private schools posted their children's schedules in response, showing a stark disparity, as middle-class, majority-white school districts offered classes in civics, media and public speaking, creative writing, music, and even Google hacks. As Adao noted: I know in suburban and better off communities the resources differ from district to district. Hell, Newark, is fighting to keep schools open! Never mind having courses like Ceramics and Google Hacks. Ceramics, by the way is a course I did have in 8th grade at the very same school my son attends but no longer is available. The stark differences a child [receives] in education from district to district is an amazing and stark reality of how different and uneven the educational playing field is for our children. (Strauss) This same narrowing and division is occurring in higher education, as enrollments in history and literature courses decline (Flaherty; Jaschik, "Shrinking") and students feel pressed by their student loans to take only courses that they believe will feed directly into a career. Instructors and students have turned to one another and to their many communities to keep the challenging and questioning spirit of education alive. The contributions included in this second issue of "Teaching Community" explore this question of education's purpose and suggest a much broader scope than is prescribed by education policy. Several of the authors, for example, examine various forms of service learning. Others explore the connections between universities and their surrounding communities and suggest ways to build collaborative partnerships. Emese Toth's photo-essay, "Teaching Contested University Histories through Campus Tours," critiques the public identity of a college by offering an "alternative campus tour," whereas guest editors Erica Meiners and Therese Quinn's Teachers Talk, "Dissenting Images: Engaging the Pedagogy of Protest," explores the pedagogical possibilities of public protest in reflections on the Women's March in January 2017. Overall, this issue proposes a model of education that emphasizes inclusivity and a commitment to teaching and learning that is critically engaged and socially transformative. The students discussed in both Anne Valk and Holly Ewald's essay, "Turning Toward...

Accountabilities: Authority, Feminism, West

A major resurgence of feminist thought and action is happening. New energy and fight is showing itself in US public and scholarly life alike. (1) It's political moment, to be sure--a moment of emergency in US accompanied by worldwide feminist mobilization and global Women's Marches of January 2017. A certain doldrums or feminist fatigue has been interrupted--a rude awakening and opening out from accumulated malaise laid on by Western world postfeminist and postracial neoliberalisms of last fifteen years. Clearly, a jostling on this scale does not appear without a history. This special issue of Studies in Novel, set in motion in summer of 2016 before election of Donald Trump, indicates one piece of that history. Edited by Sigrid Anderson Cordell and Carrie Johnston, issue chronicles work of cultural critics and literary scholars as they strategize about research on issues of women, gender, and sexuality, and geopolitical space of US West. An upcoming seminar in March 2018 of C-19, Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, led by Jennifer Turtle and Jean Pfaelzer, will be devoted to Feminist Critical Regionalism and Climate of Western Literary Studies, offering another sign that more focused work is coming. (2) Of course short and longer-end effects of these scholarly efforts, not to mention feminist activisms as they unfold in real time, is question of hour. Reading this special issue, one has sense that working on US from feminist perspectives is something of an extreme sport--you need to be in shape for it. as an imagination, as a material place, as a history, always seems to get upper hand, to take back immediately whatever benefit was gained through rebellion, refusal, or critical intervention. The reason for its particular force field of power, which scholars have written a great deal about, has to do with regional as a double for US nation--the story of settling is story of America. Perhaps major critical intervention of last twenty years in field of western literary studies is to delink region from nation and to reposition as global (Kollin), spectral (Tatum), relationally transnational (Hsu), a system of local/global Wests (Comer 2010), westness (Campbell), or border space (Saldivar). This repositioning has reframed regional analyses in transnational and critical regional directions in order to accomplish various kinds of intrusions on knowledges of empire as well as established radically alternative genealogies and lived geographies. Moreover, critical turn to Wests, to westness as a system and colonial world network, has brought phenomenon of settler colonialism into fore of critical field. The US is an example par excellence of not just Anglo settler logics and history (Wolfe, Veracini) but simultaneous and competing Spanish colonialities and modernities (Aranda). Settler maps, meanings, and place making has been made more textured still for US studies by way of enormous offerings of Indigenous studies. The recent expansion and depth of that field as a field (Allen), what it teaches about ongoing or enduring indigeneity (Kauanui), fact of thoroughly different and incommensurate understandings of place and territory (Byrd) that map over and inhabit so-called West toward indigenous histories and futures (Bernardin)--all of these have reoriented political and ethical stakes, and epistemological contexts, for scholars' work. Notwithstanding any of this activity, however, and not a surprise given imperial origin stories at stake, the of popular discourse--that place of proving and opportunity and settler sovereignty--bounces back in culture and politics with regularity and ease. What also bounces back is masculine whiteness of discourse. Even as field of US study has moved into transnational and global framings, and into a sustained reckoning with competing settler colonialities, there is not yet a simultaneously wholesale critical reckoning with nexus of racialized women, gender, and sexuality across these scales and histories (Comer 2015, 2016). …

Struggling for food sovereignty in the World March of Women

This contribution focuses on how food sovereignty is being re-signified as a feminist issue by a non-peasant transnational feminist network, the World March of Women. First, we review the feminist literature on women, gender and food sovereignty and make suggestions regarding how to conceptualize the latter to better analyze women’s and feminist struggles on this terrain. Second, we highlight the variety of discourses and practices through which food sovereignty is appropriated in the different spaces and scales of the March. Third, we identify the political dynamics that underlie the uneven deployment of the project of food sovereignty among the national coordinating bodies of the March. Our conclusion stresses the role of discursive articulations and of internal and external alliances as processes through which food sovereignty is both diffused and transformed, and draws some implications for the larger scholarship on food sovereignty.

March against Racism and Violence and in Favor of Living Well (bem viver) Brasilia 2015 National Black Women's March November 18

March against Racism and Violence and in Favor of Living Well (<i>bem viver</i>) Brasilia 2015 National Black Women's March November 18

Can pejorative terms ever lead to positive social consequences? The case of SlutWalk

Critics of SlutWalk social movements claim that the term slut can never be empowering and that it is inherently derogatory. However, recent research suggests that the in-group can re-appropriate slurs successfully (e.g., Croom, 2013, Galinsky et al., 2013). In two experiments, we investigated whether the typically pejorative term slut can lead to positive social consequences when used in the context of a social justice movement. We exposed participants to the term slut and systematically varied the sex of the speaker (Study 1) and the context in which the slur was used (Studies 1 and 2). Women were less likely to endorse common rape myths after being exposed to slut in a supportive (i.e., SlutWalk march) relative to a nondescript context (i.e., yelled in the street), regardless of the sex of speaker (Study 1), and even when compared to baseline (i.e., absence of any mention of the term; Study 2). Moreover, within a supportive march context the use of the slur slut did not significantly lower women's feelings of empowerment relative to a slur-free women's march (Study 2). Taken together, results demonstrate that the slur slut is not inherently derogatory and can be re-appropriated under supportive march contexts. Implications for language re-appropriation in social demonstrations are discussed.

Queering Ireland, In the Archives

On June 16, 2008, the National Library of Ireland officially accepted the Irish Queer Archive, a community-based archive of lesbian and gay historical and cultural materials, a transfer both literal and symbolic, marking the importance of lesbian and gay history to the nation's history. This essay briefly examines the issues associated with this transfer of materials to an institutional home, a transfer that confers legitimacy and authority but also raises questions about access and inclusion (particularly gender inclusion), as well as questions about the nature and purpose of queer archives. To illustrate some of these questions, the author offers a number of textual and visual materials: a small archive project of Irish queer history, concentrating primarily on literary materials (that have not been published or have limited availability) and organized around four broad categories of history, space, language, and performance. Included here are: excerpts from Sea Urchins, an unpublished but historically important play by Aodhan Madden, a play inspired by one of the most important public protests in Irish gay and lesbian history, the 1983 Stop Violence Against Gays and Women March; an unpublished English translation of one section of Micheál Ó Conghaile's groundbreaking novel, Sna Fir; examples of lesbian visual culture; a collection of poems from community journals (suggesting, perhaps, the importance of artistic expression to political activism); and imagery from Alternative Miss Ireland and the Emerald Warriors gay rugby club.

Up the Capitol Steps: A Woman's March to the Governorship by Barbara Roberts

 Reviews of available statistics, as flawed or incomplete as they may be, would at least serve as an indicator of the early Latino presence in the state. Perhaps because of the problems finding data,the writers turn to extrapolating national trends and histories of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in other regions of the United States to Oregon. While these histories may be relevanttoOregon ’smexicanos,explicitorimplied connections are difficult to confirm with the historical sources mentioned in the book. By far the strongest sections of the book are their coverage of mexicanos since the 1980s and the oral histories collected by the authors; although a bit more background on the informants interviewed for these chapters and the testimonios would be helpful. It is not always clear, for example, what specific years or time periods are being described. Still, the power and detail of these insights are illuminating and often quite moving. They help humanize a population that is often invisible or, when noticed, is seen as a cultural and economic threat to the rest of state. The anthropological and sociological details of contemporary mexicano life in the later chapters are also quite detailed and, in many ways, more relevant for understanding the present and future presence of mexicanos in Oregon. An expansion of these sections would have made for a more focused study. Those shortcomings aside,this is a welcome addition to the growing number of works on Oregon’s cultural diversity. The authors provide a good introductory history, and a vivid portrayal, of some of Oregon’s newest and oldest immigrants: los mexicanos. Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga Washington State University, Vancouver Up the Capitol Steps: A Woman’s March to the Governorship by Barbara Roberts Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2011. Photographs, notes, index. 448 pages. $24.95 paper. One can easily imagine Oregon leaders — past, present, and hopefuls — eagerly snatching up copies of former Gov. Barbara Roberts’s engaging memoir to see how they fare. To do so, however, would be to miss a much larger and more important story.Roberts has crafted a fascinating glimpse into her personal life, Oregon politics, and the inextricable link between the two. According to her work, Roberts came from humble beginnings. The daughter of a millworker , she followed the path of many women of her time:an early marriage with no thoughts of being anything beyond wife and mother. After experiencing dismay and outrage at the limited resources available for her autistic son, Roberts began lobbying for children’s services. This set her on a personal and professional trajectory that ultimately led to her march up the Capitol steps as Oregon’s first woman governor . In between, she struggles with divorce, falls in love with and marries her legislator and mentor, Frank Roberts, and wins election to a succession of political positions such as school board member, county commissioner, state representative,and Secretary of State.She documents each juncture with rich details of her victories, trials, and disappointments. Her memoir is at its best when Roberts discusses her campaigns. Although everyone knows the outcome of her gubernatorial battle with David Frohnmayer and some pesky lesserknowns , for instance, few may recall Roberts’s initial underdog status in that contest. Thankfully , she provides a page-turning, almost dayby -day account of the intricacies of her race for the governorship,complete with a cast of colorful characters including supporters, detractors, andoperatives.Initialpollingnumbersrevealed Frohnmayer held a significant lead in popularPurchase back issues of the Quarterly. Call 503.306.5230 or send an e-mail to museumstore@ohs.org.  OHQ vol. 113, no. 2 ity and fundraising. She explains how she narrowed and ultimately overcame Frohnmayer’s advantage. When the polls finally closed on November 6, 1990, Roberts had secured a slim winoverFrohnmayerandthird-partycandidate AlMobley.AsRobertssteppeduptothepodium to claim victory,she bubbled,“You’re looking at thehappiestcandidateyou’veeverseen!”(p.211). In reality, it was the best of times and the worst of times for Roberts.Her father had died during her campaign, her husband’s health was failing, and she took office at the same time voters passed Ballot Measure 5, which significantly limited property-tax revenue, forcing drastic cuts in state services. Although Roberts discusses her many...

Selective Silence and the Shaping of Memory in Post-Apartheid Visual Culture: The Case of the Monument to the Women of South Africa

This paper focuses on a particular event in South African history and the ways in which the event is memorialised and remembered in post-apartheid South Africa. In her book History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa, Annie Coombes remarks, ‘Women's vital role in the overthrow of the apartheid state has been sorely neglected in favour of a more monolithic representation of the liberation movement’.1 In this paper I consider Coombes's claim in relation to one specific attempt at public memorial after apartheid: the Monument to the Women of South Africa located at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. As the only commemorative site dedicated entirely to women's apartheid-era political efforts, the Monument to the Women of South Africa is of vital importance to the memory of women's role in the struggle; and yet a tension exists between the monument's presence as a feminist site, and its disappearance from public view: the Monument has essentially been invisible to the public for most of its existence, due in part to the inaccessibility of the Union Buildings. The Monument's invisibility not only trivialises the political significance of the Women's March, but is also a distressing act of post-apartheid erasure of women's political agency. I argue that when one considers this alongside the more widespread exclusion of women in post-apartheid commemorative sites, this not only has implications for the telling of history, but may very well affect women's ability, in Cynthia Enloe's words, to ‘sustain an authentic political life in post-war periods’.2 1A. Coombes, History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 107. 2C. Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 71.

Revitalizing the Debate between and : The 2004 March for Women's Lives

The contemporary U.S. debate over abortion has been waged as a battle between <life> and <choice>. The author traces the development of these ideographs, arguing that through their verbal and visual strategies, advocates on both sides of the issue have rendered ideographic meaning concrete. Whereas the fixed definitions have served the cause of <life> well, they have been detrimental for <choice>, leading advocates to seek out ways to revitalize the debate. The 2004 March for Women's Lives was a key event in this larger effort; through it, participants revitalized the abortion debate, bringing renewed flexibility to the ideograph <choice> at the same time it challenged the fixed status, and the veracity, of the ideograph <life>.

The women's march 50 years later…challenges for young women

abstract This year, South Africa celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Women's March, which was the commencement of a strong, female force that helped setting the agenda for our country's racial liberation. Yet, while liberation is to be celebrated, it is equally important to highlight its shortcomings—the provisions set out in South Africa's relatively new constitution do not translate into a better life for all, particularly young women. There are challenges that still need to be addressed. In this open forum, I argue that some of the challenges faced by young women today are an indirect result of a crippled and inconsistent women's movement. Many young women's initiatives lack a strong analysis of gendered, rights-based discourses in their programming, and this is based on a weak women's movement and lack of engagement with feminist ideology and practice. Without a vibrant and consistent women's movement, the spirit of the 1956 women's marches is not kept alive, and the legacy of the women's movement is not passed on to the younger generation. Additionally, I shall examine the current face of women's activism to ascertain whether these structures offer an enabling environment for ordinary young women to embrace feminist identity and become gender activists.

The Women's March 50 Years Later... Challenges for Young Women

The Women's March 50 Years Later... Challenges for Young Women

Finding Her Voice(s): The Development of a Working-Class Feminist Vision in Ethel Carnie's Poetry

The effort to recover and reevaluate British working-class women's writing is still in its early stages. One writer who certainly deserves such attention is Ethel Carnie (1886-1962), first British working-class woman to sustain a long and varied publishing career. This essay will focus on Carnie's earliest publications, three volumes of poetry that appeared between 1907 and 1914, and interpret their themes and developments against backgrounds of both nineteenth-century working-class poetry and early twentieth-century labor unrest and women's suffrage agitation. (1) Carnie's poetic growth across seven years between 1907 and 1914 is striking. Although she began writing as a factory girl supported by middle-class mentors, her first volume, Rhymes from Factory (1907 and 1908), barely touches on realities of working-class life and is largely unmarked by class consciousness or feminist concerns, focusing more on imitations of Romantic odes to Nature and filled with impressive allusions to Greek and Roman classics. Gradually, however, Carnie's poetry begins to reflect both context she writes in and influence of earlier working-class poets. When her poetry reaches maturity in her 1914 volume, Voices of Womanhood, Carnie moves from ignoring her working-class background to embracing it with detailed poems dramatizing working-class women's lives as well as poems that critique ideals of art that ignore its basis in class distinctions. Like Ernest Jones and other Chartist poets, Carnie's later poems often employ a collective voice, and, like such working-class predecessors as Scottish poet Janet Hamilton, she writes with a particular awareness of issues that face working-class women. But Carnie does not merely place herself in working-class poetic tradition; she revises that tradition through her strongly feminist interpretations of traditional working-class metaphors such as slavery and motherhood that tended to align women with political passivity or, at most, allowed them virtue of endurance. In fact, I would argue that Carnie's Voices of Womanhood is unique in its careful rereading of place of working-class women and their importance to working-class politics as a whole. Carnie is distinctive in her emphatic stress on women's liberation as a necessary component of working-class and human liberation. In Voices, her dramatic monologues bring a remarkable range of working-class women's voices into play, voices which resonate with words of their foremothers and fathers and yet also strike out on their own, inspired by women's suffrage and union movements. Further, her collective voices are gender-egalitarian, and, in concert with her socialist background, offer images of a transformed artistic practice that challenges past traditions' reliance on gender stereotypes or class exploitation. 1 As a British working-class woman writer, Ethel Carnie had a unique career, both in terms of its length and its variety. Between 1907 and 1936, Carnie produced three books of poetry, eleven novels--one of which, Helen of Four Gates, was made into a silent film--four books of children's fairy tales, and one novella, in addition to numerous short stories and journalistic pieces. She also edited weekly newspaper, The Woman Worker, for nearly a year. (2) In 1913, Ethel Smyth, composer of suffrage anthem, March of Women, set two of Carnie's poems--Possession and Song of Road--to music, dedicating them to suffrage leaders Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. Thus, while a website on Smyth now refers to the completely forgotten Ethel Carnie, (3) during first decades of twentieth century Carnie's work attracted considerable attention. Carnie's work is also significant because of her background and political affiliations. Born in 1886, daughter of two cotton-mill weavers, she began half-time work in mill at age eleven and left school for full-time work as a winder at thirteen. …