Establishing women's rights became part of the moral justification given for waging `war on terror' by ensuring regime change in Afghanistan. Yet by December 2002, Human Rights Watch was reporting ongoing violations of women's rights. Western presumptions that women's lives would be transformed simply by removing the Taliban were false. This `interchange' explains this gap between expectation and reality by examining the contentious history of Afghan gender politics and the current political and economic (...) situation. Acknowledging such factors reveals that Western intervention will not easily subvert the existing gender order. Rather, any real change will result, not from prescribing Western models, but by enabling Afghan women to be autonomous agents with the right to determine their own life plans. (shrink)

The article discusses the problems of development of women’s political rights in Lithuania in the legal historical aspect starting from the 16th century, when some property and individual rights were enshrined in the first codifications of the laws of the Great Duchy of Lithuania. The aim of the article is to show that women’s struggle for political equality and suffrage at the end of the 19th and at the turn of the 20th century correlates with the movement for (...) re-establishment of the independent State of Lithuania. As a result in Lithuania equal suffrage and political rights were ensured from the very beginning of independence. In 1905 the Great Seimas of Vilnius recognized the principles of equality of women and men and declared the principles of equal general election to the Seimas (parliament); women’s suffrage, as one of the elements of legal equality, became constitutionally entrenched already in the first temporary Constitution of the State of Lithuania in 1918. At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century women’s rights have been further developed, moreover, the first woman was elected as President of the Republic in the national elections in May 2009. (shrink)

Populist-nationalist ideologies pose a threat to women’s rights. This article examines to what extent national institutionalisation of international frameworks promoting women’s rights can weather the misogynistic political climate accompanying the global rise of populist nationalism. The post-2016 situation in the Philippines offers a testing ground for this problem due to the co-existence of President Duterte’s hypermasculinist national leadership with a strong history of institutionalisation of the UN’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Drawing from an analysis of (...) WPS policy and institutions in the Philippines between 2009 and 2019 and from field research and interviews with government agencies, local civil society organisations and international partners, this article argues that the WPS agenda will likely survive in the hostile environment. But it also finds that institutionalisation alone does not guarantee successful implementation. While the WPS agenda may ostensibly remain a national priority under populist-nationalist regimes, its progression has been halted. (shrink)

In the following study the author goes back to the beginnings of the Women's Rights movements in order to pose the question on gender equality by approaching it through the prism of language as a powerful tool in human rights battles. This permits her to show the deep interrelation between women's struggle for recognition and some particular women rights, like the "feminization" of professional titles and the implementation of a gender sensitive language. Hence she argues (...) the thesis that even in the most advanced European democracies, where freedom of speech, education, and scientific research seem actually to be legally guaranteed as universal rights, there is still a deep conflict in regard to the use of language and also that we have throughout history backlashes, reproductions of past stereotypes, and a loss of women's rights which were previously acquired. (shrink)

The publication in 1869 of Mill’s Subjection of Women gave rise to philosophical and political responses beyond Western Europe on the relationship between Westernization and women’s rights in developing, colonial, and post-colonial countries. Through the first comparative study of the Subjection of Women alongside the forewords to six of its earliest non–Western European editions, we explore how this book provoked local intellectuals in Russia, Chile, and India to engage its liberal utilitarian, imperial, Orientalist, and feminist ideas. By showing how (...) Mill’s Western European biases and instrumental reasoning establish problematic rhetorical models for women’s rights arguments, we are able to explore the ethical dimensions of women’s rights issues in the context of cultural and political imperialism. Most importantly, this reception history illustrates how cross-cultural and culturally sensitive dialogue on women’s rights can push us beyond Western bias and imperialism in advocating for the end of women’s subjection around the globe. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe trace Susan Moller Okin’s reception of Mary Wollstonecraft with respect to the relationship between religion and feminist liberalism, by way of manuscripts housed at Somerville College, Oxford and Harvard University. These unpublished documents – dated from 1967 to 1998 – include her Somerville advising file, with papers dated from 1967 to 1979; her 1970 Oxford B.Phil. thesis on the feminist political theory of Wollstonecraft, William Thompson, and J.S. Mill; her teaching notes on Wollstonecraft originating in 1978, for her course (...) ‘Gender and Political Theory’ held at Brandeis and Stanford in the 1980s and 1990s; and her correspondence with John Rawls, dated from 1985 to 1998. A consistently secular feminist liberal, Okin had a blind spot with regard to religion, which led her to misinterpret Wollstonecraft’s theology as contradictory to her consequentialist arguments for women’s rights. Wollstonecraft virtually disappeared from Okin’s published corpus, overshadowed by the secular utilitarian feminist liberal J.S. Mill. Wollstonecraft nevertheless remained a deep philosophical source for both the method and the principle behind Okin’s distinctive brand of feminist liberalism. Okin’s reception of Wollstonecraft suggests that the fissures caused by religious conflict in modern politics have not only generated multiple liberalisms, as Rawls argued, but also multiple feminist liberalisms. (shrink)

How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analysing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns - humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre - in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while (...) its feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered - although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. (shrink)

The so-called genetics revolution rests on a history which at its least can be described as controversial. Modern genetics needs to bear this history in mind. In particular, as with the past, the area of reproductive choice seems particularly vulnerable to potential abuse. Courts in the UK and elsewhere have already shown themselves willing to interfere with the choices of women in the management of their pregnancies. Medical advance, perhaps particularly the capacity to visualise the developing foetus, has (...) added complexity to the question of whether the health care provider has one patient (the woman) or two patients (the woman and the foetus). Additionally, pregnancy is thoroughly monitored in modern medical practice and genetics may provide a further impetus or incentive to mandate increased policing of pregnancy. Gene therapy, once offered, will add further to the desire to ensure that women make the 'right' choice, especially when the invasion required is relatively minimal. Further, genetic information is at best predictive, but may, because of its scientific nature, appear to those receiving it to be certain. Thus, the provision of genetic information may reduce rather than enhance choice, unless carefully and sensitively provided. A mature and sophisticated debate about the role of genetics in reproduction is required-engaging rather than bypassing the public-if the real potential of genetics is to be vindicated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste SystemChristopher S. QueenDr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System. By Christophe Jaffrelot. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xiii + 205 pp.Outside of India, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar remains virtually unknown. Everyone knows that Mahatma Gandhi led the fight for Indian independence and that his nonviolent marches inspired Dr. King and the American civil rights movement. Most educated (...) men and women have heard of Nehru and some of the political and literary figures that India has produced in modern times. But few know of the first Untouchable to attend college, who went on to earn advanced degrees in the social sciences and law at Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and Grays Inn, who returned to India in the 1920s to launch a civil rights movement for Untouchables, [End Page 168] who drafted the constitution for the Republic of India as its first law minister, and who led a mass conversion to Buddhism weeks before this death.Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) is venerated by millions of Buddhist and low-caste followers in India today, and at the same time feared by politicians determined to preserve the Hindu caste system he vowed to destroy. Admirers call him Babasaheb Ambedkar or simply Baba, using a traditional term of respect for a guiding elder, and many use the greeting Jai Bhim (“Victory to Bhimrao”) within the Untouchable communities. Ambedkar is portrayed on ubiquitous wall calendars, public statues, and home altars alongside that of the Buddha, wearing a Western suit and tie, with the horn-rimmed glasses and pocket pens of a scholar and diplomat. Although widely regarded as a bodhisattva or Buddhist saint, he is never pictured in the robes of a holy man or entreated in prayer by his devotees. And while most of his campaigns for Untouchable human rights were driven back by the Hindu nationalists, many of the provisions of his path-breaking legislation were eventually adopted after his death. In the intervening decades, amid deepening polarization over his legacy, the state government of Maharashtra has published eighteen volumes of Ambedkar’s collected works and the government of India has bestowed on him its highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna.Given the dearth of Western scholarship on Ambedkar’s place in the history of modern India and the emergence of socially engaged Buddhism, I welcome Chris-tophe Jaffrelot’s Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System. As a social scientist and director of the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internatio-nales (CERI) who has published more than a dozen books on South Asian politics, Jaffrelot is well qualified to assess Ambedkar’s life and thought. Drawing on a wide range of materials on the social reform movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and Ambedkar’s contributions to sociology and politics, the author aims to redress Ambedkar’s neglect by Indian scholars before the 1990s, when the low-caste movement began finally to gain traction. However, he does not address the anomaly of Ambedkar’s neglect by all but a small circle of Western authors.1The strength of Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability is its concise analysis of the geographical, political, and social context of Ambedkar’s career. Jaffrelot shows how British recruitment of the Mahars, members of Ambedkar’s lowly but numerous caste, for service in the colonial army resulted in disproportionate levels of literacy. Ambedkar was the fourteenth child in such a military family, whose father held the rank of major and served as a school master for the barracks. Both parents and all of Bhimrao’s uncles could read and write, compared to less than one percent of Mahars in village life. Moreover, in spite of his brilliance and determination, Ambedkar could not have continued his education without the financial support of Maratha maharajahs who opposed the Brahmins’ monopoly in education. “Ambedkar was the heir to a regional tradition; his struggle harked back to the anti-Brahmin movements which emerged in western Maharashtra from the mid-nineteenth century onward, a precocity that only the Dravidian South—the other key area of anti-Brahmin mobilization—could match.”Jaffrelot presents... (shrink)

Lecture 1. What is intellectual history? -- Lecture 2. The scientific origins of the Enlightenment -- Lecture 3. The emergence of the modern intellectual -- Lecture 4. The cultural meaning of the French Revolution -- Lecture 5. The new conservatism in post-revolutionary Europe -- Lecture 6. The new German philosophy -- Lecture 7. Hegel's philosophical conception of history -- Lecture 8. The new liberalism -- Lecture 9. The literary culture of Romanticism -- Lecture 10. The meaning of the (...) romantic hero -- Lecture 11. The Industrial Revolution and classical economics -- Lecture 12. Early critiques of industrial capitalism -- Lecture 13. Hegelianism and the young Marx -- Lecture 14. Marx's social critique -- Lecture 15. Feminism in the 19th century culture -- Lecture 16. Women's rights in a man's world -- Lecture 17. Tocqueville & Mill, rethinking liberal theory -- Lecture 18. Nationalisms and national identities -- Lecture 19. The novel as art and social criticism -- Lecture 20. Science and its literary critics -- Lecture 21. Charles Darwin and the new biology -- Lecture 22. Controversies of social Darwinism -- Lecture 23. The heroic critic in mass society -- Lecture 24. Nietzsche's critique of European culture. (shrink)

This volume brings together for the first time all the writings of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill on equality between the sexes, including John Stuart Mill's _The Subjection of Women_, a classic in the history of the women's rights movement since its publication one hundred years ago. Also contained in this volume is a major interpretative essay by Alice S. Rossi on Mill and Harriet Taylor which describes and analyzes their long personal and intellectual relationship.

"The Greatest is Love." God wants us to love our neighbors. If this is the premise of being Christian, then why do thousands of denominations claim to be the "right and true" one, implying that all others are false? The author searches for truth and explores real world issues concerning Christians throughout history and today, and the future of Christianity in this ever-changing world. Join the author as he challenges you to think outside of your comfort zone and questions (...) what you might have been told not to question about the Word of God. This book contains many facts and true stories, some you might recognize and some from the author's own life, as he logically discusses controversial subjects such as a Perfect Bible, sex, lying, killing, ethics, Christian leadership, Bible-thumping judgment, and women's rights. It is well documented and written in easy-to-understand language to arm you with the knowledge you need to discuss Scripture in an educated and meaningful way, and to develop a real-world perspective of Christianity; a must-read for all who profess to be Christian! (shrink)

This chapter would have liked to invite its readers on an exciting but breath-taking journey through the historical landscapes of international law, since ‘time immemorial’ a male-centred and, until the 1990s, almost exclusively male intellectual tradition and professional practice – at least in the eyes of the currently dominating historiography. Helas, the ambition had to be downscaled into a few rapid zooms, touristic snapshots in an impressionistic mode, on seven contexts in time and space in a hasty timeline from the (...) eighteenth century to 2021. They reflect, merely as examples, women’s status in international law in diverse political, social and legal transformations or crisis. Some are representing moments of codification or the break-through of certain interpretations of women’s rights. Others are selected for their role in enabling women’s participation in decision-making or entry to international legal positions, or because they provide an example of women’s international activism for women’s rights. All of them might have preceded, followed, or in fact themselves constituted ‘Grotian Moments’ for ‘women’s rights’ – did they, and if not, why? Should they have? If yes, which ones and how, to what effect for ‘women’? (shrink)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is widely considered to be the founder of the early women’s rights movement in America. She convened the first convention dedicated specifically to women’s rights in America,...

The Dobbs decision will directly affect patients and reproductive rights; it will also impact patients indirectly in many ways, one of which will be changes in the physician workforce through its impact on graduate medical education. Current residency accreditation standards require training in all forms of contraception in addition to training in the provision of abortion. State bans on abortions may diminish access to training as approximately half of obstetrics and gynecology residency programs are in states with significant abortion (...) restrictions. The Dobbs decision creates numerous hurdles for trainees and their programs. Trainees in restrictive states will have to travel to learn in a different program in a protective state. As training opportunities diminish, potentially leading to a decline in clinical skills, knowledge, and experience in the provision of abortion, the rate of complications and maternal mortality are likely to rise. This will likely have a disproportionately negative effect on preexisting disparities in reproductive health fueled by a longstanding history of systemic racism and inequities. This work aims to both define the looming problem in abortion training created by Dobbs and propose solutions to ensure that an adequate workforce is available in the future to serve patient needs. (shrink)

This paper explores conceptual and practical linkages between women and food, and argues that food security cannot be realized until women are centrally included in policy discussions about food. Women's special relationship with food is culturally constructed and not a natural division of labor. Women's identity and sense of self is often based on their ability to feed their families and others; food insecurity denies them this right. Thus the interpretation of food as a human right requires that (...) food issues be analyzed from a gender perspective. For example, the paper asks how the rights to food intersect with the rights of women and other human rights; what the policy implications of these intersecting rights are; and how their integration will contribute to the effort to view all human rights as mutually reinforcing, universal, and indivisible. The second half of the paper speculates on the significance of distinctions between the right to be fed, the right to food, and the right to feed for understanding the relation between gender and food. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction VIOLENCE AND INSTITUTION IN CHRISTIANITY Robert J. Daly, SJ. Boston College We need both to define our terms and to indicate whether we are using them in a normative or descriptive sense. Thus the question: "Is Christianity"—or, if you will—"Are the institutions of Christianity violent or nonviolent?" can be answered with either a Yes, or a No, or with anything in between, depending on the meaning we attach (...) to theterms "violence," "institution," and "Christianity" (Daly 1997, 321-43). When we speak normatively, or take Christianity and its institutions accordingto its best ideals, Christianity isessentially nonviolent. But when we speak descriptively, i.e., take Christianity according to what the institutions ofChristianity have actually done, and according to how those who call themselves Christian have actually acted, we can make the argument that Christianity is violent, ffanalogous distinctions can be made from within the other four traditions, this might offer a good starting point for discussion. Adapting to my purpose standard dictionary definitions, I understand violence to include in a broad way the justified or unjustified human exertion of internal or external power or force in order to achieve an injurious or abusive end, i.e., an end that is against the will, the good, or the interests of those who suffer it. (This includes all war and avoids, at least at the outset, arguments about whether a war is or can be a "just war.") I understand institution in its ordinary meaning of: any significant or established practice, relationship, structure, system, or organization in a society or culture. I understand Christianity also in its ordinary sense: the Roberti. Daly, SJ.5 religion which, derived from Jesus Christ, and based on the Bible, is professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies. Now, to help set the background for our discussion, I will try to list and briefly describe, relative to this theme, some of the major aspects or "moments" of Christianity (or Christian History), and do this in an approximately diachronic or chronological order. Much of this will be descriptive, but I will not go out of my way to dissociate the descriptions from the effects of all normative claims. I.Violence and Institution in the History of Christianity [1] The biblical foundation of Christianity in the Hebrew Scriptures. [2]The pervasiveness of violence in the Bible. [3]The Christian Scriptures present themselves as a gospel of peace. [4]Jesus and nonviolence. [5]Early Christians and nonviolence. [6]The early Christians and the military. [7]The "Constantinian turn." [8]Caesaro-papism. [9]The relegation ofChristian pacifism to religious and monastic life. [10]The just war theory. [11]The medieval Christian taken-for-grantedness of violence. [12]The Crusades. [13]Medieval Christian peace movements [14]Christians and heretics. The Inquisition. See [11] above. [1 5]Christianity and the witches. See [U] above. [16]The Reformation. [17]The Radical Reformation and the Peace Churches. [18]St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (August 1572). [19]The religious wars. [20]Absolutism. [21]Modernity. [22]The Quakers—Religious Society of Friends. [23]The Enlightenment and Modernity. [24]Christianity and world mission; Christianity and colonialism. [25]Slavery. [26]Christianity and the "war" against native cultures. [27]Christianity and the First World War. [28]The Second World War. [29]The Holocaust. 6 Violence and Institution in Christianity [30]Christianity and the modern peace movement. [31]Christians and the "seamless ethic of life." [32]Christianity and International Communism. [33]Liberation theology. [34]The liberation of women. [35]Christianity and the resurgence of tribal and nationalist violence. [36]Christianity and human rights. [1] The biblical foundation of Christianity in the Hebrew Scriptures. Christians and Jews have the same family origins. Since believing Christians no less than believing Jews accept and revere the Hebrew Scriptures as the inspired word of God, Christians and Jews are indeed, to paraphrase Pope John XXIII, siblings. There is, beyond this, fromJudaism to Christianity, a significant parent-child relationship. In recent years (but not early enough to have prevented the Holocaust), the main line churches ofChristianity have rejected the supersessionism (the doctrine that the Old Testament has been abrogated by the New Testament) that used to characterize Christian attitudes towards the Jews and that... (shrink)

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female (...) genital mutilation; and reproductive rights. (shrink)

This paper discusses the work of Ismat Chughtai (1911–1991), a controversial writer whose long literary career extending over four decades roughly corresponds to the formative stages of the Indian women's movement. It interprets Chughtai's novella The Heart Breaks Free (1966) to forward an anti-teleological enquiry of the women's movement in India. This progressive teleology often suggested by a discussion of the ‘waves’, ‘stages’ or ‘phases’ of the Euro-American women's movement and adopted to postcolonial women's movements, such (...) as those in India, Jamaica and South Africa, is belied by the piecemeal legislative gains won by activist efforts. Some of the questions governing my enquiry are: What lessons can a questioning of teleology teach us about the gains and losses of postcolonial women's movements? If the alternative to teleology is, as I suggest, a genealogy, then what constitutes a genealogical enquiry into the women's movement in India? In face of apparent and self-acknowledged losses and ineffectiveness in recent times, would the movement's apparent unity across religious differences be a way of initiating such an inquiry or is another mode of analysis required? The paper directs attention to the Indian women's movement's attempts at bringing together women of different religious persuasions, legislative, and religious edicts related to Muslim women's right to co-habitation and divorce, and ‘cases’ that serve as testing points of the movement's struggle against religious and state authority. It also points to the neglected factor of economic security for women as a way in which a genealogical inquiry can proceed so as to strengthen the legislation and the movement itself. (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)

This work is a survey of the efforts through which women have changed their place in American society from the nation's founding to the present. Examining the historical struggle for suffrage, legal and property rights, and rights in the work place, the authors show how these experiences have shaped a contemporary movement for economic, political, and social equality that has become increasingly independent and less and less likely to place women's issues second to other national concerns. The (...) authors recount a history of women activists who repeatedly set aside their own issues in favor of others that seemed more pressing--from abolition and preserving the Union, to labor solidarity in the 1920s, and civil rights and the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. Male domination of these movements and a lack of support for women's issues have been major factors in creating the contemporary feminist philosophy of going it alone. The book is divided into three topical sections, each of which offers a historical analysis and draws on a variety of sources such as legal statutes and judicial decisions, demographic information, public opinion polls, and biographies and other narrative accounts. It is a richly documented resource for courses and research in women's studies, sociology, politics, and U.S. legal and political history. (shrink)

This paper looks at selected reviews of women’s philosophical (and literary) works by Revolutionary author and politician Pierre-Louis Roederer. This study occasions the following remarks. Women’s works, when they raised political radical and sometimes feminist agendas were not only read and reviewed, but considered part of the general Revolutionary effort to relieve social and political inequalities. Secondly Roederer appears, from these reviews, as committed to convincing the French intellectual community that works by women ought to be taken as seriously as (...) works by men, and to combat the prejudices which meant that they often were not. I will highlight in particular his reading of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman as both a fictionalized continuation of the philosophical programme of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and as a contribution to the philosophy of emotions – for which he compares it to Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy. I will also look at an unpublished draft in which he compares and contrasts Grouchy, Germaine de Staël, Emilie du Chatelet and Suzanne Necker’s writings on love. (shrink)

Writing around the time of the French Revolution, Condorcet was a very early advocate of women’s suffrage. To fully appreciate the importance and originality of his contribution to the cause of women’s political rights, it is necessary to situate his ideas within the broad context of revolutionary feminist activism in general, its goals, modes of expression, successes or failures, as well as the nature of the opposition it faced. Such contextualization confirms that Condorcet, whose affirmation of women’s voting (...) class='Hi'>rights was grounded in the theory of natural rights, was the most articulate and consistent feminist voice during the Revolution. My analysis of the Convention’s decision to ban all women’s political clubs in the fall of 1793 also calls into question a common and influential assessment of the Revolution. In contrast to the anti-feminist arguments of the Montagnards who wielded power at the time, arguments predicated on a restrictive understanding of natural law, Condorcet’s earlier feminist reasoning based on natural rights, one of the central political concepts of the Enlightenment, casts doubt on the claim that the Revolution was inherently misogynist and that the bourgeois public sphere to which it gave rise was founded on the exclusion of women. (shrink)

Land is a constitutional issue in Ethiopia. Article 40 of the FDRE constitution enshrines governing provisions about rural and urban land. Legislation power is given to the federal government (Article 51(5) of the constitution) although this power can be delegated to regions (Article 50(9) of the same constitution). In contrast, administration power is allocated to regions (Article 52 (2(d)) of the constitution). The federal government has enacted the Rural Land Administration and Use Proclamation 456/2005. Both federal and regional land laws (...) have Alternative Dispute Resolution clauses. However, the opportunities and challenges of these clauses from the access to justice perspective are not studied very well. The main objective of this paper is to assess the legal framework and practice of ADR mechanisms in the rural land administration system from the access to justice perspective and come up with a policy option. Doctrinal type of legal research is applied where it involves theory testing which deals with studying existing laws (both federal and regional laws). In addition, both primary and secondary sources have been used. Primary qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The study found that there are legal constraints. One significant legal constraint is the requirement for mandatory mediation in certain regional states before seeking recourse in a court of law. Mediation is not clearly and uniformly applied per the law and in practice (often the practice and legal framework confuse mediation with arbitration, inappropriately giving decision-making powers to mediators, and turning them into arbiters). Women and Vulnerable Groups are generally more negatively affected by the overreaching of mediators into decision-making, because the mediators are more easily influenced by the party opposing women and Vulnerable Groups, and/or the mediators are culturally biased. This study recommends that mediation should be made optional, where mediators are chosen by the parties and the legal framework is clear that the role of the mediators does not involve imposing decisions. For Oromia and SNNPR, the legal regime of mediation should be clarified to avoid confusion with the arbitration. It is necessary to train community-level mediators in the law and the protection of land rights of Vulnerable Groups against gender discrimination. (shrink)

Abstract:AbstractWomen's Liberation was a radical, multiracial feminist movement that grew directly out of the New Left, civil rights, antiwar, and related freedom movements of the 1960s. Its insight that “the personal is political,” its intentionally decentralized structure, and its consciousness raising method allowed it to grow so fast and with such intensity that it swept up liberal feminist organizations in a wildfire of change. Though women's liberation was fundamental to the emergence of a mass feminist movement, the persistent (...) stereotypes of this feminist upsurge as white, middle-class, anti-motherhood, and anti-sex have obscured the creative radicalism of this early period and erased the presence of women of color and working class women. In a period of extreme racial polarization, feminist efforts to articulate the intersections of gender with race, class, and sexuality were often deeply flawed, but they began a conversation on which later generations could build. As scholars unearth the complex history of this dynamic and revolutionary moment they complicate narratives of the so-called “second wave.”. (shrink)

The problem of providing mandated medical care has become commonplace as correctional systems in the United States struggle to manage unprecedented increases in its aging prison population. This study explores older incarcerated women’s perceptions of prison health care policies and their day-to-day survival experiences. Aggregate data obtained from a sample of 327 older women residing in prison facilities in five Southern states were used to identify a baseline of health conditions and needs for this vulnerable group. With an average of (...) 4.2 chronic health conditions, frequently histories of victimization, and high rates of mental health issues, the women’s experiences of negotiating health care was particularly challenging. By incorporating the voices of older women, we expose the contradictions, dilemmas, and obstacles they experience in their attempts to obtain health care. It is clear from the personal accounts shared that, despite court mandates, penal harm practices such as delaying or denying medical treatment as well as occasional staff indifferences are common in women’s prisons. With older women having the greatest need for health care, an age- and gender-sensitive approach is recommended. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 253 Sonja Thomas The Women’s Wall in Kerala, India, and Brahmanical Patriarchy On January 1, 2019, a human chain of women, between three and five million strong and 385 miles long, gathered to protest the barring of menstruating women from entering Sabarimala Temple in Kerala, India. The so-called Women’s Wall received widespread news coverage; in the United States, (...) NPR, the BBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all had stories on it. Debra Messing, Kerry Washington, and Rose McGowan tweeted about it. As a scholar of caste, gender, and religion in Kerala, India, I watched the news and international attention with a good deal of interest and a bit of unease about how the intersections of casteism and patriarchy (brahmanical patriarchy) were glossed over in the reporting. The issues surrounding the Women’s Wall reveal the ways in which certain groups invest in the protection of brahmanical patriarchal power; a power that is reflected in political tensions between the Kerala state and the Indian central government that may come to a head in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Casteism and religious divides in Kerala are rarely discussed in depth because Kerala is largely seen as a progressive state, with a 94 percent literacy rate. Other development indicators also point to the assumption that Kerala is exceptional: low infant mortality rates, low maternal mortality rates, low fertility rates, and a population where there are more women than men. Kerala is seen as secular because there is a large number of both Christian and Muslim religious minorities. In 1957, 254 News and Views Kerala made history by democratically electing a communist government and initiating a set of far-reaching (although not all-encompassing) land distribution policies. The state is seen as transgender friendly with a transgender beauty pageant and support for trans surgery. The “feminist ” Women’s Wall protest fits in quite neatly within the dominant narrative that Kerala is exceptional, progressive, and thus a model for other Indian states and for countries in the Global South to follow. However, even as “progressive” Kerala is celebrated today, it is not clear that women in the state are necessarily as empowered as commonly believed. The state has some of the highest rates of violent crime in the nation and violence against women is widespread.1 Kerala’s suicide rates are two times the national average, and Kerala leads all other states in India in the number of family murder/suicides.2 Women are vastly underrepresented in politics.3 Although women are educated, the female workforce participation rate is one of the lowest in India.4 There is evidence to suggest that educated, nonworking women are using their education toward securing a better marriage match rather than for employment or empowerment.5 Kerala has a history of extremely repressive caste practices. This area of India once not only practiced untouchability, but what is known as “distance pollution.” A Dalit (the most oppressed caste in the caste hierarchy) was not allowed within sixty feet of a Brahmin (the most privileged caste), and the mere shadow of a Dalit falling upon a dominant-caste person could result in a Dalit’s death.6 Dalit Bahujans were prohibited 1. See Swapna Mukhopadhyay, ed., The Enigma of the Kerala Woman: A Failed Promise of Literacy (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2007). 2. Jocelyn Lim Chua, In Pursuit of the Good Life: Aspiration and Suicide in Globalizing South India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 3. J. Devika and Binitha V. Thampi, New Lamps for Old? Gender Paradoxes of Political Decentralisation in Kerala (New Delhi: Zubaan: 2012). 4. Praveena Kodoth and Mridul Eapen, “Looking Beyond Gender Parity: Gender Inequities of Some Dimensions of Well-Being in Kerala,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 30 (2005): 3278. 5. Sonja Thomas, “Education as Empowerment? Gender and the Human Right to Education in Postcolonial India,” in Human Rights in Postcolonial India, ed. Om Prakash Dwivedi and V. G. Julie Rajan (New York: Routledge, 2016), 82; Ritty A. Lukose, Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 104. 6... (shrink)

In the twentieth century, the UN Declaration of 1948 is considered to be the international standard for universal human rights. In 1791, Olympe de Gouges critically analysed the French Declaration of Human Rights of 1789, and found that women were excluded from it.1 This paper is a critical examination of the 1948 UN Declaration, with equally troubling findings.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:104 Feminist Studies 44, no. 1. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Estelle Carol The Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective: A Memoir In 1973, the Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective worked in an old run-down second-floor office on Belmont Avenue, which we shared with the main offices of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union (CWLU).1 They call it New Town now, but in 1973, there wasn’t much new about it. We weren’t (...) the only artists in the building though; downstairs was a tattoo parlor. Still, it was better than having the studio located in my apartment on Newport Street, where there were silkscreen tables in the dining room and a bathroom that doubled as a darkroom. My bedroom door opened directly into the dining room and usually reeked of the foul chemicals we used to make the posters. Just one OSHA inspection would have shut us down forever, but it was not until later that we learned about the dangers of long-term exposure. On Newport Street, the apartment was right next to the Ravenswood Branch of the “L,” and it shook like the aftershock of a California earthquake each time a train passed. But we were in the midst of a women’s revolution, and our priorities were clear. 1. The Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective (WGC) was a “workgroup” of the CWLU from the very start. There were about 25 workgroups and other groups within the CWLU. CWLU outreach to recruit new members got a lot of new women into WGC. WGC, Women’s Liberation Rock Band, and Womankind Newspaper were the cultural arms of the CWLU. Cultural outreach to attract new CWLU members and new feminists to the movement in general was critical to the CWLU’s success. In Celebration of Amazons, 194. All posters designed and silkscreened collectively by the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, www.cwluherstory.org. Courtesy of CWLU Herstory Project. All posters are on silkscreen. Turning Through Time, Workwoven, 195. Sisterhood Is Blooming, Springtime Will Never Be the Same, 190. Chicago Women’s Labor History, 194. International Women’s Day (reprinted from a Cuban poster). ABOVE Healthcare Is for People, Not for Profit, 195. OPPOSITE Abortion Is a Personal Decision, Not a Legal Debate, 190. ABOVE Healthcare Is for People, Not for Profit, 195. OPPOSITE Abortion Is a Personal Decision, Not a Legal Debate, 190. OPPOSITE Chicago Maternity Center, 192. ABOVE Lesbian Pride, 192. Mountain-Moving Day, 192. ABOVE Detail from Mountain-Moving Day, 192. OPPOSITE Women Unite, Take Back the Night, 199. Lipstick and Blood (reprinted from a Cuban design). Women Are Not Chicks, 191. Liberation School for Women, 192. Boycott Red Coach Lettuce, 192. Working Women Unite, 195. International Women’s Day, Many Waves But One Ocean, 192. Estelle Carol 121 If you look at Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective posters, you’ll rarely see a person’s name on them, because we decided early on that art had been done all wrong by men. It was based on egotism and the cult of the individual—the great-men-of-art syndrome. So we decided to throw all that out, and art now had to be a collective experience. So every poster that we created had to be done by committee. Every one. We had a system in which any one of the collective could get an idea or a phrase or an image and decide to do a poster. They would ask two or three other members to be their assistants and to help develop the idea. And then in little teams they would physically create the poster in silk screen. It had to be a collective process. There’s no way that one single woman could really do it because we were using very primitive reproduction methods, and we needed at least three people to run the silk screen. The silk screens were all hand printed. No machines. If a poster was more than one color, it had to be hand printed, one color at a time, so it was very, very labor intensive. And... (shrink)

The history of corporations in the United States (U.S.) is much older than the country, as it must be understood in the context of the history of peoples of Europe who eventually dominated the North American continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These European settlers came, in part, to achieve economic prosperity for themselves and, in many cases, for early forerunners of the modern corporation. These business organizations had predecessors in Europe millennia earlier as ancient Romans had (...) developed a functional and successful form of corporation for the purpose of conducting commerce in the Roman Empire. In the decades that followed the founding of the U.S. in 1776, corporations evolved from rare, small, closely controlled business organizations with a multitude of restrictions to very large, very powerful modern institutions that enjoy many of the legal rights of humans. With this evolution came ethical issues, as (1) the ethical distance was altered between corporate decision-makers and those affected by those decisions, and (2) many of the legal rights of individual humans were extended, through litigation, to corporations. This article explains the historical development of the U.S. corporation and identifies 20 Critical Events in the Ethics of Corporation History (CEECH). An understanding of these historical events may facilitate comprehension of many of the current ethical issues associated with a legal organizational form that profoundly affects business and society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:396 Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Lisa Rofel A View of Women’s Studies from Afar and Near As a member of the editorial collective of Feminist Studies, I have had the pleasure of reading the submissions to this special issue on the state of women’s, gender, feminist, and sexuality (WGFS) studies programs. All the accepted articles highlight why WGFS studies programs have been, (...) and continue to be, a vital part of intellectual training in US academies. I read the submissions from a particular perspective: that of having been trained in a discipline I happen to love, cultural anthropology, and at the same time always having been a feminist scholar within my discipline. When I was deciding which PhD program to enter, feminist anthropology was beginning to garner much attention. Along with feminist historians, feminist anthropologists were not only trying to include women in the picture, but were asking instead how attention to gender transforms the big questions about politics, social relations, and cultural meanings. This feminist approach would forever change how anthropologists analyze culture and power. Since I was both a feminist and an anti-imperialist activist, anthropology felt like the right discipline to choose. That might seem like a strange juxtaposition—anti-imperialism and anthropology—for those not familiar with the history of the discipline. When I entered graduate school, some anthropologists had already begun the self-critique of the discipline and its collusions with colonialism. As I moved through my graduate program, I was part of the creative efforts to figure out what kind of anthropology we could Lisa Rofel 397 foster that would be anti-colonial as well as post-colonial. It was a heady and exciting time to experience how we could develop a critique of culture and power. Reading over the submissions for this special issue, I was reminded of feeling troubled by those students in interdisciplinary programs (and not just from WGFS studies programs) who approach faculty in conventional disciplines only for training in methods. Frankly, I am very tired of being treated this way. In my discipline, methods are tied to the kinds of theoretical questions someone wants to ask. Texts that explain, for example, how to do an oral life history demonstrate how the method is tied to analytical/political questions. One of the best texts in this vein is Sherna Gluck and Daphne Patai’s Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History.1 We never train our students merely in how to engage in participant-observation or how to conduct an interview, but rather how to think analytically about what the student wants to ask in the first place. For example, one of the graduate students I work with, Kali Rubaii, just finished her PhD dissertation, “Counterinsurgency and the Ethical Life of Material Things in Iraq’s Anbar Province,” for which she also did analogous research in the Palestinian territories. In such conditions, one has to think very carefully about how one works with—rather than does research on—the people whose horrendous living conditions (thanks to US imperialism) under what Rubaii calls “less-than-lethal counterinsurgency” matter a great deal for the rest of us to understand.2 Rather than interview them or do something called participant-observation, Rubaii did what she calls “transhumant ethnography,” which meant she decided that ethically she had to live through everything that her interlocutors were living through, including constantly moving from one unsafe or only temporarily safe place to another. Rubaii’s work, as an example, reminds us that methods are inextricably linked with the power dynamics infusing the worlds we study. In addition to the matter of methods, I am concerned about a problematic assumption that what distinguishes and even defines WGFS 1. Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York: Routledge, 2013). 2. Kali Rubaii, Counterinsurgency and the Ethical Life of Material Things in Iraq’s Anbar Province (PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2018). 398 Lisa Rofel studies programs is attention to power. This assumption reflects the need for students in interdisciplinary programs to learn more about the genealogy of the theoretical... (shrink)

This book is the first to ask whether there is a specifically European dimension to certain major issues in Women's Studies. It strives to create a synergetic debate among different disciplines and cultural traditions in Europe, and, in doing so, fills some gaps in our knowledge about women and enriches debates hitherto dominated by Anglo-American influences. Among the new areas of enquiry opened up in this book by the specificities of European Women's Studies are: * The fact that (...) Europe has repeatedly experienced warfare on its own territory which has impacted significantly on women. Hence the focus in this volume on women and militarism, and on ethnic cleansing as an attack on the family. * The abidingly problematic relationship between feminism and anti-semitism, and issues of migration and 'whiteness' in a context where racism reflects the colonial histories of particular European countries. * The importance of passion and the emotions, as well as psychoanalytical theory, for politics particularly in Southern and Eastern European countries. * Current problems facing Europe, including the decline of the welfare state, the phenomenon of the 'single' woman, and the relationship between women's rights and human rights. * The diverse faces of feminist movements in particular European countries. Reading feminism from a European perspective will enable readers to reflect upon the ways in which changes in political, social and cultural positions and practices over the past century in Europe have impacted on feminist thinking and theorizing. The volume raises important issues about the transfer of feminist concepts across cultures and languages. And to English-speaking audiences the volume also offers fresh viewpoints on some of the key debates in Women's Studies. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Methodological Challenges to Justifying the Inclusion of Specific Women in Our Histories of Philosophy: The Case of Marie de Gournay Gournay's Text and the Querelle des Femmes Gournay's Method The Skeptical Challenge of Nurture to the Argument from Nature The Skeptical Challenge to the “Might Makes Right” Argument The Skeptical Challenge to the Argument from Woman's Creation The Skeptical Challenge from God's Privileges against the Vanity of Man Concluding Remarks Notes.

Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue , the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. As well as summarizing Buber's early intellectual development and attitudes - his mysticism, his youthful existentialism, his philosophy of Judaism and religious socialism - it focuses on the two crucial issues of his mature thought: his dialogic or I-Thou philosophy, (...) and his probing of the nature and redemption of evil. As a sensitive, intuitive and perennially fascinating account of one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers, and as an influential classic in its own right, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief. This fully revised and expanded 4th edition includes a new preface from the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin. (shrink)

When Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919 granting women voting rights, 13 western states had already adopted woman suffrage. Only 2 states outside the West had done so. Using event history analysis, the authors investigate why woman suffrage came early to the western states. Alan Grimes's hypotheses, that native-born, western men were willing to give women the vote to remedy western social problems and to increase the number of women in the region, receive little support in our (...) analysis. Rather, this study finds that woman suffrage came to the West because of the mobilization of the western suffrage movements and because of political and gendered opportunities existing in that region. (shrink)

Academic examination of the role of women as Australian citizens. Asks what it means to be a woman citizen in Australia today. Questions male domination of Australian public political life. Examines the histories of citizenship for Australian women of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, showing how gender has been central to the construction of citizenship. Demonstrates how the masculinisation of citizenship has marginalised women's activities as citizens. Includes notes, select bibliography, notes on contributors and index. Editors both teach (...) class='Hi'>history at the University of Western Australia and have published on women's issues and Australian history. Crawford's previous titles include 'Women and Citizenship: Suffrage Centenary'. (shrink)

The concept of ‘accounts’ (Scott and Lyman, 1968) – or linguistic strategies for neutralizing the negative social meanings of norm violation – has a long history in sociology. This work examines British and American women's accounts of cosmetic surgery. In the medical literature, feminist writings and the popular press, aesthetic plastic surgery has been associated with narcissism, psychological instability and self-hatred. Given these negative connotations, cosmetic surgery remains a practice requiring justification even as its popularity increases. Drawing on (...) interview data, I argue that respondents' efforts to account for cosmetic surgery vary according to the ‘repertoires of evaluation’ (Lamont and Thévenot, 2000) made available by their own nation and, particularly, by its healthcare culture. In the market-based US healthcare system, women justify cosmetic surgery by referring to their personal and financial ‘investments’ in physical attractiveness and well-being. Such explanations are less legitimate in Britain, where healthcare is considered a social right rather than a consumer good. In the latter context, women employ narratives that medicalize the pre-surgical body by stressing the physical pain and emotional distress that it caused. (shrink)

This paper analyses the National Populist Challenges to Europe’s Center Right. It assesses the cases of the UK, Germany and France. It poses three questions for Europe: How will political integration be achieved and maintained? What policies will foster economic inclusion in the Eurozone? And, third, what are the best means to achieve economic solvency and growth. The paper make a case that neoliberal economic policies over the past decades have undermined some nations' public sector and have also contributed to (...) tensions between the geographical east and west of Europe. (shrink)

An illustrative comparison of human rights in 1948 and the contemporary period, attempting to gauge the impact of globalization on changes in the content of human rights (e.g., collective rights, women's rights, right to a healthy environment), major abusers and guarantors of human rights (e.g., state actors, transnational corporations, social movements), and alternative justifications of human rights (e.g., pragmatic agreement, moral intuitionism, overlapping consensus, cross-cultural dialogue).

The rights of women in fundamentalist Muslim countries has become a cause celebre for many North American women; however, the problem of how to balance respect for women's rights and respect for cultural differences remains in dispute, even within feminist theory. This paper explores how U.S. feminists who are serious about supporting the struggles of women across cultural borders might best adjudicate the seeming tension between women's rights and cultural autonomy. Upon examining 4 representative approaches (...) to this problem, the paper argues that the seeming choice between respect for women's rights and respect for cultural differences is a false one and that both goals are advanced when global-minded U.S. feminists build on the insights of marginalized cultural groups to reflect critically on their own moral authority and their own communities' complicity with other women's oppression. (shrink)