Extant sociological theories of gendered power within marriage focus on how social forces—such as gender inequality—shape women’s power within already established partnerships and subsequently affect their risk of intimate partner violence. Yet, inequitable social forces similarly shape women’s life conditions prior to and during the marital transition, with implications for women’s power in marriage. In Myanmar, gender relations between women and men historically have been touted as equitable and advantageous to women. Rare (...) qualitative data find that structural gender inequalities permeate Myanmar society, and intersect with other social forces, to constrain women’s marital power. In particular, we argue that women’s transition into marriage is a critical period to assess how gendered social inequalities determine the future distribution of power within marital relationships. These premarital social processes result in a “preconditioning” of relationship dynamics from the onset of marriage, with long-term effects on women’s power within the relationship, and subsequent exposure to intimate partner violence. We encourage sociological work on gendered power in the family to systematically consider women’s premarital social conditions as predictors of women’s relative power in marriage, with implications for their health and well-being. (shrink)

This article argues that changes in the organization of social reproduction, defined to include the activities, attitudes, behaviors, emotions, responsibilities, and relationships involved in maintaining daily life, can explain historical differences in women's political self-organization. Examining the Progressive period, the 1930s, and the 1960s and 1970s, the authors suggest that the conditions of social reproduction provide the organizational resources for and legitimation of women's collective action.

During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on interviews with prison reformers, criminologists, and policymakers, as well as on the analysis of historical documents, we illuminate how a specific figure of the “criminalized woman” helps to translate the abstract (...) notion of social justice into situated practice. From the 1970s onward, a new knowledge of women’s crime would emerge: it constituted female offenders as victims of patriarchal oppression and victimization, allowing the prison system to be criticized as androcentric and discriminatory against women. We argue that subsequent reform pursued gender justice in the form of difference-based, gender-responsive programs and spaces targeting individual inmates’ character and mindset. Thereby, the reformers’ initial critique of social justice would be unintentionally depoliticized and so gender, economic, and political inequalities remained unaddressed. Our purpose is hence twofold: first, to review the recent history of women’s incarceration in Germany, and second, to add a social justice focus to the international criminological debate on gender, prison, and reform. (shrink)

On 9 May 2005, the Israeli Ministry of Health issued guidelines spelling out the conditions under which sex selection by preimplantation genetic diagnosis for social purposes is to be permitted in Israel. This article first reviews the available medical methods for sex selection, the preference for children of a specific gender in various societies and the ethical controversies surrounding PGD for medical and social purposes in different countries. It focuses then on the question of whether procreative liberty (...) or parental responsibility should be the centre of attention in this context. Finally, the article critically examines the new Israeli guidelines and their implications for the women undergoing the necessary medical treatments, for the children born as a result, for other members of the family and for society in general. (shrink)

Men often make riskier decisions than women across a wide range of real-life behaviors. Whether this sex difference is accentuated, diminished, or stable under stressful conditions is, however, contested in the scientific literature. A critical blind spot lies amid this contestation: Most studies use standardized, laboratory-based, cognitive measures of decision making rather than complex real-life social simulation tasks to assess risk-related behavior. To address this blind spot, we investigated the effects of acute psychosocial stress on risk decision (...) making in men and women using a standardized cognitive measure and a novel task that simulated a real-life social situation. Participants were exposed to either an acute psychosocial stressor or an equivalent control condition. Stressor-exposed participants were further characterized as high- or low-cortisol responders. Results confirmed that the experimental manipulation was effective. On the IGT, participants characterized as low-cortisol responders made significantly riskier decisions than those characterized as high-cortisol responders. Similarly, in the online chatroom, participants characterized as low-cortisol responders were, relative to those in the Non-Stress group, significantly more likely to make risky decisions. Together, these results suggest that at lower levels of cortisol both men and women tend to make riskier decisions in both economic and social spheres. (shrink)

This book, based on the Round Table on Bioethics and Women held at UNESCO during the Fourth Session of the International Bioethics Committee (IBC), presents the ...

In Mexico, the Productive Organization Program for Indigenous Women (POPMI) seeks the empowerment of productive capacities in indigenous women. Our study analyzes POPMI outreach, focusing our attention on women beneficiaries who present a high degree of social exclusion and multidimensional poverty in the State of Veracruz. In the study area, the 542 indigenous women benefited in POPMI, presented a condition of multidimensional poverty and a degree of social exclusion: very high, high and medium, they (...) represent only 22.19% of the total beneficiaries of this program In 2010, since at the state level a total of 2,243 indigenous women were cared for. The results show that the localities where the condition of multidimensional poverty and very high, medium and high levels of social exclusion have been excluded in the coverage of POPMI. (shrink)

Feminist Social Thought brings together key articles by prominent feminist thinkers, offering students sophisticated treatment of the theoretical topics central to feminist social thought. This reader highlights salient concerns in contemporary feminist scholarship and the advances feminist philosophers have made. The editor's introduction outlines alternative routes through the text, allowing instructors to easily adapt this reader to their particular courses and the interests of their students. Each article is prefaced with a short introduction by the editor placing it (...) in context, highlighting the principle issues and the conclusions reached. Students will find these headnotes helpful when tackling the challenging theoretical issues addressed. Representing a spectrum of feminist thinking, Feminist Social Thought is organized around seven topics constructions of gender; theorizing diversity; figurations of women; subjectivity, agency and feminist critique; social identity, solidarity and political engagement; care and its critics; and women, equality and justice. Students will be exposed to a wide variety of feminist philosophy and encouraged to think critically about challenging questions around pivotal subjects including * How are gender norms instilled, enforced, and perpetuated? * What are the relationships between gender and other socially demarcated positions such as race, class and sexual orientation? * What resources do women have at their disposal for recognizing their subordination and resisting it? * What goals should feminist politics pursue? * How can social and legal equality be reconciled with difference? (shrink)

When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the book exploded into women's consciousness. Before the decade was out, what had begun as a campaign for women's civil rights transformed into a diverse and revolutionary movement for freedom and social justice that challenged many aspects of everyday life long accepted as fixed: work, birth control and abortion, childcare and housework, gender, class, and race, art and literature, sexuality and identity, rape and domestic violence, sexual harassment, pornography, (...) and more. This was the women's liberation movement, and writing--powerful, personal, and prophetic--was its beating heart. Fifty years on, in the age of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, this visionary and radical writing is as relevant and urgently needed as ever, ready to inspire a new generation of feminists. Activists and writers Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore have gathered an unprecedented collection of works--many long out-of-print and hard to find--that catalyzed and propelled the women's liberation movement. Ranging from Friedan's Feminine Mystique to Backlash, Susan Faludi's Reagan-era requiem, and framed by Shulman and Moore with an introduction and headnotes that provide historical and personal context, the anthology reveals the crucial role of Black feminists and other women of color in a decades long mass movement that not only brought about fundamental changes in American life--changes too often taken for granted today--but envisioned a thoroughgoing revolution in society and consciousness still to be achieved"--Back cover. (shrink)

Although improving both the ecological and social conditions of agriculture are central pillars of agroecology, emerging empirical research has focused largely on exploring its ecological contributions. Key among the less studied social aspects is gender (in)equity. Drawing data from northern Malawi, this paper investigates the relationship between agroecology and women’s autonomy in smallholder farming households. Overall, our findings showed participatory agroecology with a gender transformative lens can promote women’s autonomy. Although there was no observed significant (...) difference in women’s autonomy at the baseline, women in agroecology practicing households (β = 0.20, _p_. (shrink)

IntroductionElements mark the reality of reading the female body in symbolic constructions and social symbols in the exercise of their reproductive health. The study aims to identify elements that characterize the female condition while analyzing the reproductive health of Brazilian and French women.Materials and MethodsA qualitative, multicenter, international study was conducted in Brazil and in France between 2016 and 2019. Data were produced through the use of semi-structured scripts. Focus group discussions and individual interviews were conducted with (...) class='Hi'>women who gave birth, hetero-female couples who lived the experience of gestation and birth of a baby, and professionals of maternal and childcare services or members of the associations concerned with the health of mothers and babies. It was guided by the theoretical-methodological framework of institutional analysis in line with the French Institutional Socioclinics.ResultsSexual and reproductive health in the realities researched in Brazil and France are sometimes close and sometimes far apart. In what involves the Brazilian health system, abortion is criminalized and often performed illegally. Furthermore, pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period are highly medicalized. In addition, childbirth is not assured as an experience for a woman and her family. This aspect is confirmed by high numbers of cesarean sections performed or by maternal and infant mortality indicators. The French health system prioritizes vaginal deliveries and seems to assure more autonomy to women, but at the same time, it is worn out by the logic of profit, the efficiency of actions, and the rationalization of practices. In association with these, there are other intrinsic elements in the functioning of the institution that delineates the format of each country: notion of women's rights, violence against women, and discussion regarding the oppression markers of race, gender, sexuality, and social class.ConclusionsBoth countries reveal aspects related to the social role of women's bodies. The established logic reflects in the decision to have children, motherhood, women's autonomy over their own bodies, and in the core values linked to the termination of pregnancy and the professional practices developed in prenatal care, childbirth, and postpartum. (shrink)

This volume provides a critical introduction to contemporary attempts to base nursing ethics on a feminine 'ethics of care'.

Within the social ontology of the nationalist model, the main agents of global justice claims are viewed as nation states or national collectivities. By contrast, within the cosmopolitan model, individuals, as citizens of the cosmopolitan world, are viewed as agents of global justice claims. I argue that neither of these models appropriately reflect the ontological conditions and circumstances of justice that have been produced by the current processes of globalization nor capture the justice claims of women who (...) suffer as a result of the global economy. As an alternative, I propose a transnational feminist model: processes of globalization have generated transnationalized socioeconomic units as ontological conditions of justice, and, in such conditions, transnational women’s collectivities are viewed as agents of global justice. -/- . (shrink)

This highly interdisciplinary volume explores the political and cultural dimensions of citizenship and their relevance to women and gender. Containing essays by leading scholars such as Iris Marion Young, Alison Jaggar, Martha Nussbaum, and Sandra Bartky, it examines the conceptual issues and strategies at play in the feminist quest to give women full citizenship status. The contributors take a fresh look at issues, going beyond conventional critiques, and examining problems in the political and social arrangements, practices, and (...) conditions that diminish women's citizenship in various parts of the world including both Western and undeveloped nations. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is necessary to focus on gender rather than exclusively on women in discussions on global poverty eradication. It argues firstly, that the drivers of poverty are complex and multifaceted leading to a least two different forms of deprivation – transitory and structural poverty – each requiring different forms of analysis and treatment. Transitory poverty can arise as a consequence of an event or shock that would diminish an individual’s capacity to retain or secure employment (...) and where a State lacks an appropriate form of social protection. Structural poverty, on the other hand, arises where groups are excluded from the workforce on a more permanent basis due to a wide variety of factors of discrimination such as sex, race, ethnicity, and age. Focusing on the sex of an individual alone cannot explain why some are more likely to experience different forms of poverty than others. Policies that protect women against transitory poverty, such as care related allowances, are not sufficient to eradicate structural poverty. Secondly, structural poverty prompts an examination of gender roles and relations. Unlike the category of ‘women’, the concept of gender demands consideration of a wider range of intersecting factors that influence life chances. The structure of contemporary gender relations, where women continue to experience higher levels of violence, and carry the greatest burden of responsibility for non-market based production activities, create the social conditions where domination and dependence thrive, and where persistently high rates of poverty seem inevitable. Such circumstances are generated by human agency. Thus, thirdly, it argues that these circumstances can and should be changed through human action. Knowledge of these circumstances gives rise to moral obligations for both men and women to avoid upholding values and practices that lead to domination and dependence as a matter of basic justice. (shrink)

This paper aims at understanding why Rousseau excluded women from citizenship. Citizenship, for Rousseau, is not a matter of right, not even a matter of behaviour (of how to behave individually to be a good citizen). It is a matter of social condition. How should society be constituted so that there can be citizens? The answer to this question is that there must be women in the private sphere so that there can be citizen in the public (...) sphere. The paper begins with Montesquieu's model of the republican condition of women, considers the way Rousseau updated this model, and concludes with the idea, that much more than the male figure of citizenship (which remains a stereotype), the woman, in Rousseau, is the true figure of modernity. (shrink)

Article 14 of the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights sets forth a few basic principles regarding social responsibility for health. It states in part that 14.1 The promotion of health and social development for their people is a central purpose of governments that all sectors of society share. 14.2 Taking into account that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, (...) political belief, economic or social condition, progress in science and technology should advance: access to quality health care and essential medicines, especially for the health of women and... (shrink)

Chronically ill conditions are particularly difficult to manage because of their impact both on the social and on the corporal sphere to such an extent as to involve a series of problems that negatively alter the quality of life of affected patients. Chronicity has also a considerable ef-fect on social capital. In the current literature, it is known that social capital may contribute to a range of advantages to people health. Chronic Venous Disease (CVD) includes several (...) pathologi-cal alterations of the venous system of the lower limbs that cause a wide range of symptoms and signs. The aim of this study is to explore, with a qualitative approach, the dynamics of social cap-ital within people's experience of CVD and describe the roles of family and friends and the health care system. The method used is based on face-to-face semistructured interviews was performed, following the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) checklist. Six-teen patients were included: 11 women and 5 men. The results obtained are completely in line with the current literature, which shows a certain difficulty in terms of daily activities, pain management; work-related difficulties; non-coverage of healthcare costs for medications and drugs prescribed. In the context of social capital, the bonding social capital of the patients inter-viewed was more positively perceived in the role of CVD management than by the patients' fami-lies. Another interesting result concerns the total absence of knowledge of patient associations with CVD. Thus, alongside the biographical destruction that CVD entails, there is evidence of the scarce relevance and presence of health policies capable of improving the quality of life of these people not only from a social and medical point of view but also from an economic point of view. (shrink)

"You have to come to my wedding," Kavita told me, turning to face me where I sat next to her on the couch. "You can come with the other people from the street. You will get everything you need for your *research* there." "I will come, I will come!" I replied enthusiastically. I had only met Kavita and her two younger sisters, Arthi and Deepti (see Figure 2.1), mere minutes before this invitation was extended. I had initially come to Pulan (...) that day in October 2012 to meet another woman, Heena, whose family rents a room on the third story of Kavita's family's home. Heena and I had been sitting in the furniture refurbishing store she operates with her husband on the main street of Pulan when Deepti, Kavita's youngest sister, passed by. Heena introduced us and told me to go with Deepti to meet her family. When we reached the family's three-story house-the largest in the gali-Deepti led me past the empty rooms on the ground floor, which I would eventually begin renting, to the second-story living room. There, we found Kavita and Arthi organizing clothing and jewelry they had purchased earlier in the day for the upcoming wedding festivities. Kavita made room for me to sit next to her on the couch and began asking me about myself. I immediately warmed to her because of her open, friendly smile and sharp, staccato Hindi, which I delighted in being able to understand. I explained that I had come to India to study how women's lives are different in rural and urban areas, and Kavita assured me that she and her family could help. She noted that her parents had come to Udaipur from Ram Nagar, a large village thirty-five kilometers north of the city, and that the family would be returning for her and her older brother Krishna's weddings the following month. Their weddings would be held five days apart to help reduce the difficulties of family members traveling from outside Udaipur. Prompted by the description of my research, Kavita commented on differences that she recognized between the village and the city. The biggest difference, she suggested, was the experience of caste, namely that in the village, people from different jatis live separately, whereas in the city, people are "mixed." As I would come to learn when visiting Ram Nagar for various functions, there is a fair amount of caste and religious diversity in the village. Although spatial and ritual segregation was rather strictly maintained during religious observances, it is likely more flexible in everyday life. The segregation during ritual functions-the occasions for which Kavita also traveled to the village-likely informed her sense of a lack of "mixing" in the village as. The majority of residents in the area of Ram Nagar where the family maintains a home were also from the Mali (lit: gardener) jati, although Mali was not a majority jati in Pulan. (shrink)

Altered Conditions provides a bold new intervention into existing theories of the human body and its meanings in a variety of cultural contexts. By exploring the history of medical narratives, especially medical case histories, as well as the exciting work that has been done in feminist and lesbian and gay studies, Julia Epstein poses a number of provocative questions about the relations between bodies, selves, and identities. Epstein focuses on a number of diagnoses that shed light on what is (...) at stake when cultures regulate human bodies, including hermaphroditism, birth malformations, and AIDS. She pays special attention to the regulation of sexual minorities and women and looks carefully at the ways in which cultures attempt to define and control behaviors seen as threatening or subversive. (shrink)

Despite its place in the humanities, the career prospects and numbers of women in philosophy much more closely resemble those found in the sciences and engineering. This book collects a series of critical essays by female philosophers pursuing the question of why philosophy continues to be inhospitable to women and what can be done to change it. By examining the social and institutional conditions of contemporary academic philosophy in the Anglophone world as well as its methods, (...) culture, and characteristic commitments, the volume provides a case study in interpretation of one academic discipline in which women's progress seems to have stalled since initial gains made in the 1980s. Some contributors make use of concepts developed in other contexts to explain women's under-representation, including the effects of unconscious biases, stereotype threat, and micro-inequities. Other chapters draw on the resources of feminist philosophy to challenge everyday understandings of time, communication, authority and merit, as these shape effective but often unrecognized forms of discrimination and exclusion. Often it is assumed that women need to change to fit existing institutions. This book instead offers concrete reflections on the way in which philosophy needs to change, in order to accommodate and benefit from the important contribution women's full participation makes to the discipline. (shrink)

This work examines the dynamics through which women are marginalized and impoverished, and offers a constructive proposal for addressing women's socio-economic vulnerability. Part One surveys the economic status of women globally and discerns both common threads of subordination and significant differences among women. Part Two reviews the social-justice positions of the Roman Catholic church and the World Council of Churches in light of this survey. Part Three identifies theoretical resources that adequately address women's socio-economic (...) vulterability. Brubaker advances her own theoretical approach, which illuminates and engages women's impoverishment. She concludes with a discussion of how placing women's economic condition at the center of Christian economic ethics would affect social analysis, economic policy, and social vision. (shrink)

Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism — and certain minority group rights in particular — make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment (...) to gender equity and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world’s leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate. Okin opens by arguing that some group rights can, in fact, endanger women. She points, for example, to the French government’s giving thousands of male immigrants special permission to bring multiple wives into the country, despite French laws against polygamy and the wives’ own bitter opposition to the practice. Okin argues that if we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices on the grounds that they are fundamental to minority cultures whose existence may otherwise be threatened. In reply, some respondents reject Okin’s position outright, contending that her views are rooted in a moral universalism that is blind to cultural difference. Others quarrel with Okin’s focus on gender, or argue that we should be careful about which group rights we permit, but not reject the category of group rights altogether. Okin concludes with a rebuttal, clarifying, adjusting, and extending her original position. These incisive and accessible essays — expanded from their original publication in Boston Review and including four new contributions — are indispensable reading for anyone interested in one of the most contentious social and political issues today. The diverse contributors, in addition to Okin, are Azizah al-Hibri, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Homi Bhabha, Sander Gilman, Janet Halley, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, Bhikhu Parekh, Katha Pollitt, Robert Post, Joseph Raz, Saskia Sassen, Cass Sunstein, and Yael Tamir. (shrink)

We encounter autonomy in virtually every area of philosophy: in its relation with rationality, personality, self-identity, authenticity, freedom, moral values and motivations, and forms of government, legal, and social institutions. At the same time, the notion of autonomy has been the subject of significant criticism. Some argue that autonomy outweighs or even endangers interpersonal or collective values, while others believe it alienates subjects who don’t possess a strong form of autonomy. These marginalized subjects and communities include persons with physical (...) or psychological disabilities, those in dire economic conditions, LGBTI persons, ethnic and religious minorities, and women in traditional communities or households. This volume illuminates possible patterns in these criticisms of autonomy by bringing to light and critically assessing the contribution of women throughout the history of philosophy on this important subject. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of historical periods and influential female philosophers and thinkers, from medieval philosophy through to contemporary debates. Important authors whose work is considered, among many others, include Hildegard of Bingen, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan Moller Okin, Hélène Cixous, Iris Marion Young, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. Women Philosophers on Autonomy will enlighten and inform contemporary debates on autonomy by bringing into the conversation previously neglected female perspectives from throughout history. (shrink)

We encounter autonomy in virtually every area of philosophy: in its relation with rationality, personality, self-identity, authenticity, freedom, moral values and motivations, and forms of government, legal, and social institutions. At the same time, the notion of autonomy has been the subject of significant criticism. Some argue that autonomy outweighs or even endangers interpersonal or collective values, while others believe it alienates subjects who don't possess a strong form of autonomy. These marginalized subjects and communities include persons with physical (...) or psychological disabilities, those in dire economic conditions, LGBTI persons, ethnic and religious minorities, and women in traditional communities or households. This volume illuminates possible patterns in these criticisms of autonomy by bringing to light and critically assessing the contribution of women throughout the history of philosophy on this important subject. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of historical periods and influential female philosophers and thinkers, from medieval philosophy through to contemporary debates. Important authors whose work is considered, among many others, include Hildegard of Bingen, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan Moller Okin, Hélène Cixous, Iris Marion Young, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. Women Philosophers on Autonomy will enlighten and inform contemporary debates on autonomy by bringing into the conversation previously neglected female perspectives from throughout history. (shrink)

The restructured globalized economy has provided women with employment opportunities. Globalisation has also meant a shift towards self-regulation of multinationals as part of the restructuring of the world economy that increases among others things, flexible employment practices, worsening of labour conditions and lower wages for many women workers around the world. In this context, as part of the global trend emphasising Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the 1980s, one important development has been the growth of voluntary (...) Corporate Codes of Conduct to improve labour conditions. This article reviews from a feminist interdisciplinary perspective the broad academic literature on women workers, covering the more classical debate on women workers in the industrialization process and entering into women workers in the global supply chains and women workers and corporate codes of conduct. The main argument is that this research on women workers is crucial to frame the issues of business ethics and in particular CSR and Codes of Conduct in the context of women in the global political economy. When this crucial knowledge is ignored, then the ethical policies of the companies also ignore the real situation of the women workers at the bottom of their supply chains. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to study the behaviour of women in extreme conditions, to establish various social roles of women, ways of their adaptation to extreme conditions on the example of Ukrainian anti-Nazi underground during Second World War. Theoretical basis. The authors derive from the fact that historical anhropology is a leading and promising area of historical research. Originality. For the first time, the authors have shown that in conditions of constant (...) stress state and direct threat to life and health, the behaviour of underground women was determined by adequate survival strategies, i.e. by the life circumstances and personal qualities of the underground members. Conclusions. Permanent existence on the verge of life and death often led women to emotional actions, deviant forms of behaviour. Their actions could be controversial, and the motives – confusing. At the same time, the majority of women left in the Soviet underground chose as a strategy of survival the path of confrontation with occupiers, held true to their choices, often showed courage, ingenuity and self-sacrifice. (shrink)

The article seeks to examine identities young women are producing within late modern social conditions with the aim of exploring these identities in relation to the increasingly fragmented project of second wave feminism. In order to evaluate whether feminism has maintained intergenerational currency, the article, based upon interviews with 33 young women aged 16–20, discusses ways in which young women are engaging with choices available to them. The active negotiation of identity requires an examination of (...) the discourses available to the subjects and in this study it is apparent that, while these young women were alienated from second wave feminism, their identities were indeed informed by intrinsically feminist ideals. This contradiction begs the question of what place young women occupy within the increasingly diverse category of ‘feminisms’? The tension between second wave feminism and postfeminism and their problematic relationship is analysed as a problem deriving from difference. Analysis of interview material is used to argue that the identities under construction allow the young women to engage in a resistant fashion with the choices they have available at the micro-level of everyday life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Women on the Global Market: Irigaray and the Democratic StateNicole Fermon (bio)Best known for her subtle interrogation of philosophy and psychoanalysis, Luce Irigaray clearly also conducts a dialogue with the political, proposing that women’s erasure from culture and society invalidates all economies, sexual or political. Because woman has disappeared both figuratively and literally from society [see Sen, “More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing”], Irigaray conceives (...) the contemporary ethical project as a recall to difference rather than equality, to difference between women and men—that is, sexual difference. She characterizes relations between men and women as market relations in which women are commodities, objects, but never subjects of exchange, objects to men but not to themselves: women do not belong to themselves but exist “to keep relationships among men running smoothly” [TS 192]. Women under these conditions require imaginative ways to reconfigure the self, to subvert the melancholy and regression of masculinist economies and envisage a future in which women would not be ashamed of the feminine, would experience it as a positivity worth emulating.Irigaray contends that after the gains of egalitarian politics are carefully examined, the inclusion of women in the political arena has failed to take into account women’s distinct and different position from men, and from each other, as well as perpetuating the fiction of the “neutral” citizen, the ahistorical individual citizen of the nation-state. It is that fiction Irigaray dispels in her critique of liberal democratic politics and its creation, “citizens who are neuter in regard to familial singularity, its laws, and necessary sexual difference” [SG 112] in order to benefit the State and its laws. The subject is male; the citizen is neuter. Who is the female citizen in contemporary society? What is the ethical elaboration of the contractual relations between women and men, and between sexed individuals and the community? How do women imagine a distinct set of rights and responsibilities based on self-definition and autonomy, given the particular strictures of contemporary politics—that is, the market-driven, antidemocratic nature of the current economic national and global forces? Irigaray suggests that “the return of women to collective work, to public places, to social relations, demands linguistic mutations” and profound transformations, an embodied imagination with force and agency in civil life [TD 65].Irigaray warns that if civil and political participation is construed in overly narrow terms, if focus is on economic or judicial “circuits” alone, we overlook the symbolic organization of power—women risk losing “everything without even being acknowledged” [TD 56]. Instead an interval of recognition can expand the political to include the concerns and activities of real women, lest silence imply consent to sexual neutrality, or more likely, to women’s obliteration under men’s interests and concerns. Women’s insistence on self-definition and wage labor, on love and justly remunerated work, [End Page 120] testifies to the obduracy of women’s difference, one that is not likely to disappear. The patriarchal family is still the legal norm, even when certain exceptions are made, while enduring questions regarding women’s health and children’s physical welfare as priorities beyond market considerations are consigned to legislative obfuscation, still a political afterthought. Instead, in the US the liberal state removes the slender welfare net specific to women and children, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and fails to provide medical coverage to those who are among the most vulnerable of its citizens. Women without access to the legal protection of sex-neutral citizenship, poor working women without language (the money for an effective “mouthpiece” to represent their distress in a court of law), are further disempowered by liberal politics’ insistence on sexual neutrality—that is, on repression or amnesia regarding the lived experiences of women.Sexual difference is key to any project of self-definition by women. Irigaray insists on the sexual nature of this self-definition, not solely for its obvious procreative necessity, but because the natural world is a source of renewal and fecundity which requires attentive interrogation and respect [SG 15]. This rebirth seems alien to the structure of male politics, which instead seem to provoke disasters (Bhopal, Chernobyl, or the current runaway... (shrink)

This collection breaks new ground in four key areas of feminist social thought: the sex/gender debates; challenges to liberalism/equality; feminist ethics; and feminist perspectives on global ethics and politics in the 21st century. Altogether, the essays provide an innovative look at feminist philosophy while making substantive contributions to current debates in gender theory, ethics, and political thought.

The paper highlights some of John Stuart Mill’s views on the problem of gender equality, as expressed in his The Subjection of Women. The paper outlines the historical context of Mill’s conception and gives an analysis of his criticism of social conditions which lead to the subordination of women. It shows also the philosopher’s main ideas and arguments for equality and friendship between women and men. Attention is paid also to several main lines of contemporary (...) reception of Mill’s views from the perspective of feminist philosophy. (shrink)

Over the last decade, growing concern over Syrian refugee women and girl’s gendered displacement experiences, including gender-based violence, has led to the proliferation of women and girl safe space interventions across neighbouring countries affected by the Syrian conflict. Though diverse in their design and implementation, some of these safe spaces aim to mobilise aspirations for feminist solidarity and collective action, where women recognise their collective power and work together to transform their gendered social conditions. Drawing (...) on feminist ethnographic research in a safe space primarily targeting Syrian refugee women in Lebanon’s Beqaa valley, I explore several vignettes that complicate dominant feminist myths underlying its mandate. These vignettes reveal that the pursuit of feminist solidarity can neither rely on myths about refugee women’s identities and conditions, nor be taken-for-granted as an organic outcome of group activities. I offer several reflections on what these vignettes can tell us about better working towards cultivating feminist solidarity in safe spaces for refugee women in practice, with the hope that their generative and transformative potential be realised. (shrink)

What happened to the feminist movement of the optimistic 1970s during the 1980s? Was it stifled by the political and economic changes associated with Thatcherism, or did it help bring those changes about? Will the 1990s see a new generation of feminists who will not tolerate the conditions under which their mothers work and live? Joni Lovenduski and Vicky Randall trace the movement's accomplishments and defeats over four successive Conservative governments. They argue that its development can only be understood (...) in the context of a rapidly changing social and economic environment and that the movement's deradicalization and apparent decline have in fact been accompanied by a greater involvement with state agencies and the growing presence of feminists in mainstream institutions. The central section examines five key areas for feminist politics: political representation and citizenship, equal employment opportunities, reproductive rights and health, motherhood and childcare, and male violence. For all of these it explores both the main preoccupations of feminist theory and important grass-roots developments. It concludes that a feminist-influenced British Women's Movement is a changed but unmistakably significant political force in the 1990s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women in TibetRae Erin DachilleWomen in Tibet. Edited by Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 436 pp.Empowerment, transcendence, and the performance of identity are common themes in the study of gender and religion across cultures. As these themes are elucidated across cultures and in different historical moments, they are troubled by a persistent refusal of gender as a category of enduring symbolic (...) and real meaning by both historical and contemporary cultural actors. In the cases of Tibetan and Buddhist studies, the approach to womanhood as a category is repeatedly subsumed by concerns with religious or ethnic and political identity. This trend has forced many scholars to appeal to the symbolic realm of the iconic female or the construction of womanhood from sparse individual accounts as representative of an artificial subcultural entity. In response to the impasse created by these methods, the editors of Women in Tibet have chosen an approach that seeks to level the field. In doing so, they have produced a work that combines textual and anthropological projects aimed at recovering the specificities of lived womanhood across a range of historical moments. Allying themselves with a historical versus a feminist agenda, they succeed in laying the groundwork for a new approach to the study of womanhood.This approach surveys the vast artillery of historically embedded social dynamics available for Tibetan women to emulate, embody, or resist. In the diversity of their selections, Gyatso and Havnevik intentionally leave room for the possibility that women continue to perform as historical actors in spite of as well as because of their association with womanhood and the disempowering social and religious stereotypes attached to it. In leaving this issue open-ended, the editors sustain the tension between approaches that locate "specifically female" elements within traditions and those that posit the category of womanhood to be subservient to other cultural categories and phenomena. Exploring the participation of women in lineages as diverse as the oracular described by Hildegard Diemberger, the medical addressed by Tashi Tsering, and the imperial aristocratic presented by Helga Uebach, the essays in this volume represent an oscillation in the perceived relevance of femaleness. Inconsistency in the priority of the category of womanhood in historical interpretation reflects fluctuating attitudes on the part of Tibetans themselves as well as of European and American scholars as interpreters of the region's religious, social, and political realities.Asceticism in particular has been a highly charged site for the exploration of these themes in both Buddhist and Christian studies, along with determining the specific nature of female monasticism. As an instance of the deliberate embrace of a social category thriving upon the confluence of the ideal and the marginal, asceticism provides a lens for considering the ways in which women exploited opportunities to survive and excel spiritually and socially, often in spite [End Page 172] of female embodiment. Several of the authors in this volume address the tension between the socially sanctioned spaces for female asceticism within the nunnery or hermitage and the identities that individuals and communities of female ascetics strive to inhabit. Kurtis Schaeffer, for example, presents the tensions operating within acts of ascetic self-clarification in the autobiography of the medieval Tibetan hermitess Orgyan Chokyi. This account provides a rare glimpse of a historical woman defining her marginality and femaleness in relationship to Buddhist notions of suffering. Schaeffer reminds the reader that even from the hermetically sealed space of the cave, social, geographic, and historical elements play a fundamental role in constructing an individual's narrative identity and conditioning the terms of her self-realization.Charlene Makley's astute observations on the identity of nuns in contemporary Amdo taps into the various power dynamics at play in the social construction of nuns as parasitic, marginal, and dispensable members of the Labrang community. These acts of identification occur in the enduring and influential discursive field of gossip centered upon the "inappropriate otherness" of female monastics and their rumored failure to perfectly embody what Makley, following Charles Keyes, terms the "third gender" of celibate monasticism. Makley uncovers the powerful signifiers of the body of the nun in this geographical and historical context as... (shrink)

For women in the former GDR, daily life has changed since the unification of the two German states. With the example of diary excerpts from the autumn of 1990, written by two women, both at that time in their early 50s and having worked full time all their lives, the question is explored how women from different social backgrounds experience the changes that have affected their daily lives, how they assess their past, approach their new living (...) conditions, cope with the demands made of them and, with the aid of examples of the symbolic division of the sexes, interpret their - changed - roles in the new social arena. (shrink)

Explanations of how identity is constructed are fundamental to contemporary debates in feminism and social theory. In this important addition to the literature, Beverley Skeggs demonstrates that class needs to be featured more prominently in theoretical accounts of gender, identity, and power. Class has been marginalized in feminist and cultural theory and it has become increasingly difficult to teach, research, or speak about class. Formations of Class and Gender identifies the neglect of class issues in favor of gender issues, (...) and shows how class and gender must be fused together to produce an accurate representation of power relations in modern society. In a sustained examination of the production of knowledge, detailed ethnographic research is used to explain how ôrealö women modify and reformulate our understanding of class, subjectivity, and sexuality. A critical examination of cultural representationùinformed by recent feminist theory and the work of Pierre BourdieuùFormations of Class and Gender is an articulate demonstration of how to translate theory into practice. Engaged with theoretical and methodological issues, this will be the standard referenced ethnography on class and gender. It will be required reading for students and researchers in womenÆs studies and sociology. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century Russia reverberated with ideas of women's liberation as a condition of genuine equality in society. These ideas came to form the basis of an entire tradition linking the "woman's" question and the "social" question together and defining the democratic character of the women's movement in Russia.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women Philosophers: Genre and the Boundaries of PhilosophyLorraine CodeCatherine Villanueva Gardner. Women Philosophers: Genre and the Boundaries of Philosophy. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003. Pp. xv + 198. Paper, $22.00.In a tradition which "trains us to read purely for content" (xii), Catherine Gardner wonders how to read the philosophy of five women who write in "non-standard philosophical forms" (xiii): Mechthild of Magdeburg's poetry, Christine de Pisan's (...) allegory, Catharine Macaulay's epistolary form, and Mary Wollstonecraft's and George Eliot's fiction. Asking how these authors' gender and their works' genre bear on their exclusion from canonical philosophy with its reliance on rigorous argument unsullied by stylistic considerations, she argues that form is integral to understanding philosophy, and can impede its recognition as philosophy. Specifically, she wonders what these historical writings can offer present-day feminist ethics?Gardner's readings and her thesis about style and genre as conditions of philosophical legitimacy are provocative. She urges "reading past" forms deemed inhospitable to moral truth—such as Macaulay's epistolary style (44-45)—to encounter the author as moral philosopher, and explain her invisibility as such. Eliot's philosophy "demands the form of a novel" (123), she proposes, and Wollstonecraft's principles of style "are ultimately principles of morality as well" (92). More complex is the poetically articulated moral epistemology in Mechthild's The Flowing Light, with God, speaking through Mechthild, as its author (154-56). Because these forms—epistolary, allegorical, mystical-poetic, fictional—have been most accessible to women, Gardner urges feminists to consider how these authors' gender bears on their exclusion from moral philosophy. Owing to women's "greater capacity for emotion and... weaker capacity for reason" (155), mystics such as Mechthild were deemed well-suited to write as they did; yet works attributed to God stand immune to philosophical argument. Macaulay's thoughts on government and social reform were judged secondary to her "feminine" ones about educating women for marriage and domesticity (26-27). Gardner is persuaded and persuasive about the philosophical stature of the works she discusses. Yet if a thinker's gender denies her philosophical status, how can she bypass those exclusionary structures—even if, like Eliot, she chooses a male name? If a work's genre removes it from the sustained argumentative debate that is the hallmark of western philosophy, how can it claim a place there?There are no easy answers, but the questions spark numerous others. Perplexing is Gardner's contention that these women are ignored because they defy norms of style and method. But how would she classify Plato's dialogues, Voltaire's Candide, Pascal's and Nietzsche's aphorisms, Wittgenstein's numbered propositions,or Sartre's, Camus' (and Beauvoir's) philosophical novels, given their maverick styles? Style alone cannot effect or explain the exclusions she deplores. More puzzling are Gardner's conceptions of standard method and dominant form (e.g., 24, 120, 175), since she does not elaborate, apart from indicating that both require rigorous prose argument. But formal and methodological orthodoxy varies historically, as in the influence of scholasticism, for Christine, which receives no mention, or Gardner's ahistorical suggestion that the absence of a "normative subject as an independent, autonomous individual" (171) is a lacuna in Mechthild's work. Why would a thirteenth-century writer presuppose an Enlightenment subject? These issues demand attention in a work of historical scholarship.A different question troubles the method discussion. The author regrets certain women's exclusion from the canon despite the philosophical nature of their work, maintaining that [End Page 215] works whose styles/forms diverge from the standard count, nonetheless, as philosophy. These women demonstrate that philosophy need not be couched in formal argument: poetry, allegory, novels can also articulate philosophical theories. But—if my reading is correct—here Gardner is inconsistent. She commends the philosophy in Macaulay's Letters, claiming it "can and does contain the sort of sustained argument... uncontroversially identifiable as... philosophical" (44), and makes similar claims for Wollstonecraft and Eliot. But in legitimating these works by received standards of argument after all, Gardner weakens the force of her claims that philosophy—good philosophy—need not be presented in orthodox form, thus... (shrink)

If there is one ethical concept considered to be central to human social life it is the idea of justice. Although there are several competing principles of justice, the core concept of justice embodies the obligation to treat like cases alike, in relevant respects. Women may differ from men in some respects, but the fact that women get sick, become injured, and die from preventable causes renders them similar to men in the need to carry out biomedical (...) research, develop therapies, and attend to health problems specific to women. An ethical perspective on women’s health begins and ends with principles of justice. Although particular circumstances and conditions differ in developed and less developed countries, the ethical conclusions regarding justice are the same for women in all societies. (shrink)

A passionate celebrator of "sexual difference," Luce Irigaray was never simply after the social equality that her generation so publicly demanded. She was seeking more fundamentally a society that celebrated the differences between the genders and their coming together in a union without hierarchy. As she formulates it in this compellingly readable introduction to her own thought, Irigaray is writing about how "I" and "You" become "We." Exploring along the way women’s experiences of motherhood, abortion, the AIDS crisis (...) and the beauty industry, this book presents one of the most important thinkers of our day in her own words. (shrink)

The “black page” in Spinoza’s Political Treatise has been much discussed and interpreted. These can be roughly divided into three groups: Approaches that see the “black page” as an extension of Spinoza’s theory of the passions and imagination; approaches that maintain that Spinoza excluded women from politics not because of their innate weaknesses but because of their social conditions; approaches that maintain that he excluded women because he saw them as weaker beings, but this contradicts his (...) certain accounts, especially in the Ethics. In this paper, I take the latter view. My contribution is to argue that this contradiction is not unique to the Ethics. I pursue my reading along two lines, one ontological and one political. In the first, I focus on the continuity between the Ethics and the Political Treatise and show that the “black page” is also inconsistent with the ontology and methodology of the Political Treatise itself. In the second, I argue that the exclusion of women also contradicts the concept of the political absolute developed in this last work, since this concept problematizes any kind of exclusion and provides for political stability the strategic principle of increasing the number of decision-makers as much as possible. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to argue the thesis that, 25 years after the fall of communism, with the exception of former Yugoslavia, there has been and still is, a lack of „women’s movements“ in the post-communist countries. The author also proposes some explanations as to why there are dozens of women’s organizations but no women’s movements. In order to support her thesis, Raynova emphasizes the difference between “women’s movements”, “feminist movements” and “social movements”, (...) and shows the weakness of some current definitions. Instead of a definition, she indicates the conditions for a women’s movement, which are: (1.) women’s oppression and discrimination as a prevalent situation, which motivates a movement when that situation is perceived as intolerable; (2.) ideas and concrete strategies on how to proceed in order to change this situation; (3.) some kind of organization or leading personalities, able to coordinate and unite women in a mass movement and to ensure continuity of action until the goals of the movement are achieved; and (4.) large masses of women who are motivated and ready to fight resolutely for changing their situation. The provided analyses show that these conditions have not been always given, but that the persisting problems of women’s problems can be resolved only if women engage more actively in civil society so as to enforce their claims. (shrink)

If there is one ethical concept considered to be central to human social life it is the idea of justice. Although there are several competing principles of justice, the core concept of justice embodies the obligation to treat like cases alike, in relevant respects. Women may differ from men in some respects, but the fact that women get sick, become injured, and die from preventable causes renders them similar to men in the need to carry out biomedical (...) research, develop therapies, and attend to health problems specific to women. An ethical perspective on women’s health begins and ends with principles of justice. Although particular circumstances and conditions differ in developed and less developed countries, the ethical conclusions regarding justice are the same for women in all societies. (shrink)

Recyclable issues do not receive sufficient attention, which thus see low awareness among Malaysians. This paper1 proposes women’s active participation in re-upcycling habits to maintain the ecologically challenging world today. Empowering women-at-home in this way enable them to sustain their own social and ecological well-being. Women can be active participants in community development activities. Even though they may be disinterested to work outside home, their involvement in their community should be encouraged. Embeddedness theory advocates empowerment of (...) women through re-upcycling actions are to be initiated from home. With the support from community, in turn, these actions can be an economic resources for their households. Malaysian women are most affected by employment opportunities, supports and reassurances from various sectors, such as the government, nongovernmental organisations and most importantly, the men in their lives. Depriving them from this socio-economic foundation will further impact the unemployment rate for Malaysia. On the other hand, if strategic planning is implemented by utilising the abundance number of unemployed women-at-home, the socio-economic conditions of the nation can also be improved. Indeed, this paper motivates discussions on the employment policy whereby re-upcycling activities may pave ways for women-at-home to get involved in employment, without leaving their homes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Women and Health Research:A Report from the Institute of MedicineAnna C. Mastroianni (bio), Ruth Faden (bio), and Daniel Federman (bio)In recent years, claims have been made by segments of the research community and by women's health advocacy groups that clinical research practices and policies have not benefitted women's health to the same extent as men's health. Central to these claims has been an assertion that (...) class='Hi'>women have been inadequately represented as subjects of clinical studies and that as a result neither health conditions unique to women—e.g., menopause—nor women's manifestations of health problems affecting both sexes—e.g., heart disease—have been investigated sufficiently.The scientific community, including federal agencies that sponsor and regulate clinical studies, is increasingly responsive to these claims and is taking steps to raise the level of women's participation in clinical studies. Controversy and concern have surrounded these actions, however. Two of the claims that have been made are: (1) that women are more difficult to study than men because of their cyclical hormonal changes; and (2) that conducting gender-specific subgroup analyses would increase the size of study populations, raise the cost of studies, and thereby reduce the number of studies that could be performed with the limited resources available. In addition, controversy over the inclusion of women of childbearing potential and pregnant women has been particularly salient. Concerns have been expressed about avoiding potential harm to existing or potential fetuses and about the possible legal and financial ramifications of such harm. A further concern involves the perceived difficulties in enrolling women in studies and retaining them for the duration of the studies.Against this backdrop, the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in October 1992 to establish the Committee on the Ethical and Legal Issues Relating to the Inclusion of Women in Clinical Studies. The Committee's charge was to: (1) consider the ethical and legal implications of including women, particularly pregnant women and women of childbearing potential, in clinical studies; (2) examine known instances of litigation regarding injuries to research subjects [End Page 55] and describe existing legal liabilities and protections; and (3) provide practical advice on these issues for consideration by NIH, institutional review boards (IRBs), and clinical investigators.The 16 Committee members came from diverse backgrounds: bioethics, law, epidemiology and biostatistics, public health policy, obstetrics and gynecology, clinical research, pharmaceutical development, social and behavioral sciences, and clinical evaluative sciences.1 Chaired by two of the authors of this article, Ruth Faden and Daniel Federman, and coordinated by the third, IOM Study Director Anna Mastroianni, the Committee met five times over a fourteen-month period, convened a one-and-one-half day invitational workshop, and commissioned several background papers. The Committee's deliberations were complicated by the announcement of new federal policies late in its term. Specifically, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued guidelines (FDA 1993) to replace its 1977 guidelines, which prohibited the inclusion of women of childbearing potential in early phases of most clinical drug trials. In addition, Congress passed the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-43), which contains provisions mandating the inclusion of women and racial and ethnic minorities in NIH-sponsored clinical research. In February 1994, the IOM Committee publicly issued its final report and recommendations, Women and Health Research: Ethical and Legal Issues of Including Women in Clinical Studies, publishing the workshop presentations and commissioned papers in a separate volume.Deliberations of the CommitteeA number of issues arose at the outset as the Committee considered its charge. A few members initially believed that verification of the underrepresentation of women relative to men in clinical studies as a whole was a prerequisite to providing policy recommendations. Others believed that such an examination would be an important contribution to the knowledge base, but that it was not necessary for addressing the Committee's charge. As summarized in the Committee's report, the Committee's research indicated that firm conclusions about the relative underrepresentation of women could not be drawn from the available data because of the lack of systematic information... (shrink)

Jane Duran's Worlds of Knowing begins to fill an enormous gap in the literature of feminist epistemology: a wide-ranging, cross-cultural primer on worldviews and epistemologies of various cultures and their appropriations by indigenous feminist movements in those cultures. It is the much needed epistemological counterpart to work on cross-cultural feminist social and political philosophy. This project is absolutely breath-taking in scope, yet a manageable read for anyone with some background in feminist theory, history, or anthropology. Duran draws many comparisons (...) and connections to Western philosophical and feminist ideas, yet avoids facile or imperialistic over-universalization. Her book is powerful, comprehensive, Pnd brave. It will prove an enormously useful resource for scholars in women's studies, philosophy, anthropology, religious studies and history. (shrink)

Plato is commonly credited with a much more enlightened view concerning the equality of women and their political rights than Aristotle. This is due to the fact that he acknowledges, in the Republic, the possibility that women possess abilities that are equal to those of men and therefore assigns to them the same functions in the state. Plato’s principle of equality is, however, limited to the women of the upper classes in the Republic, and it is, at (...) least in part, a consequence of the separation of the classes. Because these conditions no longer obtain in the “second-best state” designed in the Laws, women are assigned, there, a much inferior role. In the Timaeus, women are treated not only as the weaker but also as the decadent form of humankind in the cycle of births and rebirths. Plato’s views on the worth of women change, if not with time, then with context.Aristotle throughout supports the traditional view on the exclusion of women from politics and public life. He does so because he ascribes to women only a limited form of practical rationality. Though he ascribes to women the status of citizens, he regards them as citizens that stand in need of a permanent rule by their male superiors, in public as well as in the family. Aristotle never questions whether the same kind education would lead to the intellectual equality of men and women. The rigidity of Aristotle’s position in that respect seems to be based on a kind of “conservative naturalism.” He accepts as constituted by nature the social conditions that are observable throughout the world as he knew it. This not only explains his view on the natural inferiority of women, but also his justification of slavery as a natural institution. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, microenterprise development programs have proliferated in the United States, where they are widely praised as strategies for economic development and poverty alleviation, especially for low-income women and welfare mothers. Based on research in a highly respected urban center for women, this article argues that microenterprise development is more detrimental and problematic than it is purported to be. Two reasons are isolated. First, gender constraints mean women tend to choose small-scale, undercapitalized, and barely profitable “pink-collar” (...) businesses, largely home-based operations based on work women are already doing as part of their gender-specific role. Second, microenterprise training programs reinforce this business segregation by discounting the sociocultural conditions women bring with them to business and instead emphasizing the personal growth of individuals. The result is that women are encouraged to maintain their economic vulnerability and social peripheralization rather than become part of the mainstream business world. (shrink)

After years of activism and scholarship concerning patriarchal social structures, many contemporary societies have made substantial progress in women’s rights. The shortfall, and the work ahead, is well known. Even in societies where the most progress has been achieved, males continue to dominate at key levels of power. Yet, essentialism appears to be widely, although not yet entirely, discounted. In helping to illuminate the social ontology of patriarchy and thereby helping to defuse its injustice, scholars have made (...) proposals of patriarchy’s origins; however, these appear not to be optimally consistent with historical and prehistorical facts. This article offers a different account of patriarchy, arguing that this one can not only explain how such a social condition originated and why it persists, but also point to what may be necessary to do in order to undo it. While I do not contend this ontology of patriarchy is the best possible, it provides a good example of the many issues at stake which an account of patriarchy must explain and points to how we should seek the best ontology as a way of both understanding contemporary societies and suggesting how to rectify a long-standing injustice. (shrink)