Social Women Research Articles

Bits of Freedom: Demystifying Women's Activism under State Socialism in Poland and Georgia

This article interrogates the possibility of incorporating the state socialist women's activism into feminist genealogies locally and globally. Contemporary interest in women's political and social engagements pre 1989 transformations in eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, evidences dissatisfaction with existing approaches to state socialism and the lack of empirical research on women's political engagements during that time period. This paper, which is based on ethnographic research with former women's activists in Poland and Georgia, attempts to reconsider state socialism as uniformly “bad for women” by looking at women's motives for becoming members of parties and women's organizations, by scrutinizing their level of autonomy in working in the area of “women's rights” and by examining their approaches to feminism and systemic transformations. While studying women's lives under state socialism may constitute a valuable critical starting point for reformulation of local and global feminist theories, it frequently raises the questions of “truth” and “historical politics” relevant to some methodological debates within feminism. To address these criticisms the author explores applicability of some of the feminist methodological debates: i.e. on “location” and “affect” to the studies of state socialism.

Bits of Freedom: Demystifying Women's Activism under State Socialism in Poland and Georgia

This article interrogates the possibility of incorporating the state socialist women's activism into feminist genealogies locally and globally. Contemporary interest in women's political and social engagements pre 1989 transformations in eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, evidences dissatisfaction with existing approaches to state socialism and the lack of empirical research on women's political engagements during that time period. This paper, which is based on ethnographic research with former women's activists in Poland and Georgia, attempts to reconsider state socialism as uniformly “bad for women” by looking at women's motives for becoming members of parties and women's organizations, by scrutinizing their level of autonomy in working in the area of “women's rights” and by examining their approaches to feminism and systemic transformations. While studying women's lives under state socialism may constitute a valuable critical starting point for reformulation of local and global feminist theories, it frequently raises the questions of “truth” and “historical politics” relevant to some methodological debates within feminism. To address these criticisms the author explores applicability of some of the feminist methodological debates: i.e. on “location” and “affect” to the studies of state socialism.

Debating Gender in State Socialist Women’s Magazines: the Cases of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia

Debating Gender in State Socialist Women’s Magazines: the Cases of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia

Creating Good Socialist Women: Continuities, Desire, and Degeneration in Slatan Dudow’s “The Destinies of Women”

“The Destinies of Women,” directed by Slatan Dudow and produced by the Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), the East German film production company, visualizes the socialist moral economy developing in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the early 1950s. It highlights the centrality of regulating women’s desires to the reconstruction of gender roles by the ruling Socialist Unity Party. Harnessing women’s desires through a moral regulatory framework that relied on socialist values to determine notions of right and wrong was an important aspect of post-1945 reconstruction. It not only provided conditions for the creation of a new socialist citizenry, but it also served as a useful way to address competing visions of fulfillment in the West. This article examines “The Destinies of Women” as a lens into the ways in which women’s desires were constructed and regulated through film and the role that desire played in legitimizing the socialist project in women’s eyes

The Presence and Absence of Spanish Socialist Women in the International Trade Unions during the Interwar Period

The scarce presence of Spanish socialist women in the international trade union bodies was one of the basic facts of the interwar period; an exception was the impulse for participation on the international scene that the coming of the Second Republic and the Civil War elicited from the women. The paper seeks to analyze the female presence in the most relevant organizations, the International Federation of Trade Unions (Iftu), the International Labor Organization (Ilo), and the Socialist International. To that end we utilize diverse primary sources found in the archives of the Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), the Trade Unions Congress (Warwick University, UK), and the Fundacion Pablo Iglesias (Madrid).

Approaching the socialist factory and its workforce: considerations from fieldwork in (former) Yugoslavia

The socialist factory, as the ‘incubator’ of the new socialist (wo)man, is a productive entry point for the study of socialist modernization and its contradictions. By outlining some theoretical and methodological insights gathered through field-research in factories in former Yugoslavia, we seek to connect the state of labour history in the Balkans to recent breakthroughs made by labour historians of other socialist countries. The first part of this article sketches some of the specificities of the Yugoslav self-managed factory and its heterogeneous workforce. It presents the ambiguous relationship between workers and the factory and demonstrates the variety of life trajectories for workers in Yugoslav state-socialism (from model communists to alienated workers). The second part engages with the available sources for conducting research inside and outside the factory advocating an approach which combines factory and local archives, print media and oral history.

Content Analysis of the Political Socialization of Socialist Women's Organizations During the Japan's Colonial Period in Korea

Content Analysis of the Political Socialization of Socialist Women's Organizations During the Japan's Colonial Period in Korea

A Comparative Study on the Business Start-Up Motivations and Performance Cognition of Women Social Entrepreneur

A Comparative Study on the Business Start-Up Motivations and Performance Cognition of Women Social Entrepreneur

"Complex, Dynamic and Unique- A Study of Women Social Entrepreneurs and their Identity"

Women are increasingly contributing to the field of social entrepreneurship, however research has not kept up to pace with this development. Scholars have also argued that issues related to identity are underexplored in social entrepreneurship research (Dacin, Dacin, & Tracey, 2011). Social entrepreneurs’ desire to create change often relates to their identity (Dees, 2001). Thus it is important to study the role of identity in the lives of women social entrepreneurs. The purpose of the study was to incorporate women’s social entrepreneurs’ perspectives with regards to their identity and explore how they make meaning of their identity. The sample included 11 women social entrepreneurs. Using Seidman’ adapted (2006) two-interview approach (for a total of 21 interviews from 11 participants), findings indicate that women social entrepreneurs embrace complexity of their identity. In discussing their roles as women and social entrepreneurs, they reveal relevance of multiple identities in their lives, which they...

Exploring Dimensions of Women's Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Nepal

The article examines a variety of social exclusion and inclusion indicators grouped by domains that are commonly referred to in the social exclusion literature: economic, social, political and intra-household. Levels of social exclusion and inclusion among different groups of women across these domains are studied. This analysis reveals a complex pattern with great variations among women with different socio-demographic and socio-cultural backgrounds. Subsequently we perform a factor (principal components) analysis that identifies four major dimensions of women's social exclusion and inclusion: outward orientation, civil society involvement, household decision-making power and monetary income. These four dimensions help us uncover factors that have contributed to the social inclusion of women, from a position of exclusion a generation ago. Crucial drivers of change have been education and urbanisation, but participation in community-based organisations has also contributed. We find that gender relations in the household are the most resistant to change and cannot be easily influenced by external change agents. There appear to be different mechanisms operating for social inclusion within each of the identified dimensions. This means there is no blueprint for any policy measures that would increase social inclusion along all the four dimensions, but measures should be specifically designed for each dimension. The data are drawn from a household survey of 2547 women between 18 and 49 years of age living in 16 districts across Nepal.

Setting the Stage for Suffrage

Setting the Stage for Suffrage

From the coffee grinder to Sputnik1

The essay examines the popular Hungarian weekly women’s magazine Nők Lapja through the Sixties socialist consumption and the culture of objects and the discourse concerning the image of the socialist woman, not from the perspective of economics or the history of consumption, but from the point of view of cultural history. It focuses on the change of strategy during the Cold War, which from the side of the West signified the use of soft power, while in the East it implied the modification of socialist modernization, in so far as emphasis was shifted from aggressive armament and the conquest of space to everyday prosperity and consumption. The narrower segment under examination is the project in the Sixties that addressed the modernization of the kitchen and the woman of the house, a project which extended to the manufacturing of household appliances aimed at facilitating domestic chores faced by women who also had full time jobs, the introduction of a network of self-service businesses, the expansion of the use of canned food, as well as hygiene, environmental culture and the cultivation of taste. According to the imagery and the texts found in publications of the time, posters and women’s magazines, it was not socialist modernism and the official policy of emancipation that confronted the inherited mentality of the masses as a hindering factor, although this is what contemporary official discourse attempted to imply. This mode of discourse, the style in which the modernization of the household and the housewife and the expansion of consumption was communicated through pictures, advertisements and objects conserved old patriarchal topoi in opposition to the official political discourse of emancipation.

Socialist Wallpaper: The Culture of Everyday Life and the Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement, 1968–1990

The Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement (CBWM) was the official mass organization responsible for women’s issues in communist-era Bulgaria. As with earlier examples of state socialist women’s committees, such as the Zhenotdel in the Soviet Union, the CBWM was tasked with changing the culture of everyday life (битовa кyлтyрa) for women and families in Bulgaria. Initially, their efforts focused on improving women’s access to education, enhancing their professional qualifications, and creating structural supports for working mothers (i.e., kindergartens, creches, maternity leaves, etc.) By the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, however, the CBWM’s efforts increasingly came to focus on personal improvement through the promotion of “hobby” activities (sewing, embroidery, cooking, etc.) and on discussions of esthetic issues in the domestic sphere. This article examines the internal documents and official publications of the CBWM between 1968 and 1990. We argue that although the women’s committee was always compelled to justify its work with regard to the promotion of Marxist theories, the CBWM may have strategically used the concept of bitova culture to legitimate programing that might have otherwise been considered “bourgeois” by male elites in the Bulgarian Communist Party. Thus, even though the programs and courses sponsored by the CBWM openly encouraged the development of a more “proper” socialist consciousness, they also provided women with a break from their many duties as mothers, workers, and active members of the socialist society. As such, they were welcomed by the women who participated in them.

An Exploration on Middle Aged Women's Social Capital and Economic Capital: A Comparison of Four Different Age Groups

An Exploration on Middle Aged Women's Social Capital and Economic Capital: A Comparison of Four Different Age Groups

Study on Female Industrial Structure and Gender Segregation of China in the New Century

In the first decade of the 21st century, China has not only achieved stable and rapid economic development, but also made new progresses in industrial restructuring. The modern service industry and emerging strategic industries have provided more employment opportunities for laborers including women. Purpose – The purpose of this article is to analyze the gender segregation status and trend in the industry of China in the new century. Data/Methodology – The research includes items of female industrial structure, gender segregation. Data come from 29696 valid respondents by the Third Survey of Chinese Women's Social Status questionnaire survey which was jointly organized by the All China Women's Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics starting on December 1, 2010. The Methodologies applied in this paper are descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. Findings – China's employment women are mainly concentrated in the lower income levels and lower social security industries in 2010. Among the monopoly industries, 80 percent of them are male which indicates that women can share only a small amount of social development outcomes. Compared with the status of 10 years ago, China's employment industry structure has changed as follows. Firstly, the female industry structure presents polarization trend. The proportion of women in the 10 monopolies declined, and the proportion of women in modern service industry improved. Secondly, the proportion of men in some traditional industries improved. Last but not least, age and education have significantly statistical effects on the opportunities of modern service industries' employment. Originality/Value – This research studied the gender segregation status and trend in the industry of China in the new century. The results of this research provide empirical evidence that the ten monopolies gender segregation status of China is more serious than 10 years ago. Age and education of female have significantly statistical effects on the opportunities of modern service industries' employment. That is to say, well-educated young women have more opportunities to work in modern service industries.

“Dissenters from the Religion of Patriotism”: Women's Poetic Responses to World War I in the Oakland (CA) World

This article examines the pacifist, nonresistant, and socialist women who published poetry in the California Socialist Party's newspaper, the Oakland World. These women—Mary Laughlin, Edna Helm, Caroline Wadsworth Turner, Fanny Bixby, Dora V.B. Chapple Hagemeyer, Ruby Herman, Ruth Le Prade, Anna Louise Strong—are unfortunately absent from the otherwise excellent histories of women's resistance to World War I. This examination of the work of eight women poet‐activists who published in the World from April 1917 to April 1918 remedies this omission by revealing their significant influence on wartime discourse.

Halutzah or Beauty Queen? National Images of Women in Early Israeli Society

Scholars have argued that there were women who immigrated to Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) in order to find gender equality. The image of the emancipated Halutzah, the female proletarian and field worker, was broadly publicized. From 1948 on, the socialist Women’s Workers Movement and its image of the Halutzah continued to influence Israeli society. They admired hard-working women who sacrificed their bodies for the national collective—in the media, their lives and sacrifices were celebrated and glorified through the act of remembering. Shortly after the state was formed, beauty pageants began to take place and expressed values in sharp contrast with the Halutzah. The women’s magazine Laisha (For the Woman) started the selection of the Israeli Beauty Queen in 1950 and created a public arena for the adoration of the beautiful female body. During young Israel’s struggle in forming a unified nation, both constructs competed for the ideal image of the Israeli woman—one in creating a heroic past, the other in drawing a picture of a glamorous future. This paper explores the dynamics behind gendered national images and evaluates patterns of persistence and/or change.

The Argument of the Broken Pane

Within the cut-throat world of newspaper advertising the newspapers of Britain's Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) Votes for Women and the Suffragette managed to achieve a balance that has often proved to be an impossible challenge for social movement press—namely the maintenance of a highly political stance whilst simultaneously exploiting the market system with advertising and merchandising. When the militant papers advocated window smashing of West End stores in 1912–1913, the companies who were the target still took advertisements. Why? What was the relationship between news values, militant violence and advertising income? ‘Do-it-yourself’ journalism operated within a context of ethical consumerism and promotionally orientated militancy. This resulted in newspaper connections between politics, commerce and a distinct market profile, evident in the customisation of advertising, retailer dialogue with militants and longer-term loyalty—symptomatic of a wider trend towards newspaper commercialism during this period.

'And so we Transform a People': Women's Social Action and the Reconfiguration of Politics on the Right in France, 1934-1947

'And so we Transform a People': Women's Social Action and the Reconfiguration of Politics on the Right in France, 1934-1947

A very tangled knot: Official state socialist women’s organizations, women’s agency and feminism in Eastern European state socialism

This article discusses some current research claims on gender and state socialism in Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989. It raises questions about claims by Revisionist Feminist Scholars that official state socialist women’s organizations were ‘agents’ on behalf of women, or women’s movements, perhaps feminist, and not ‘transmission belts’ of communist parties. State socialist policies are described as ‘friendly towards women’ and ‘pro-women’. In contrast, the author claims that these organizations both were and were not agents on behalf of women, and also prevented women’s agency. Meaningful women’s agency is not actually shown to occur intermittently throughout their history, but in two contexts – before 1955 or in moments of political rupture. Scholars do not distinguish the who, when, and what – Who could be agents? When could they be agents? And what kind of agents could they be? State policies, the author claims, were also at one and the same time ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly’ towards women, sometimes harming women. The author explores why this research is happening now, discussing research on Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Democratic Women’s Organization of Germany (DFD), the Democratic Association of Hungarian Women (MNDSZ), later renamed MNOT, the Romanian National Council of Women (CNF) and the Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Women’s Organization (AFZ).