In a recent article in this journal, Kathryn MacKay advances a defence of ectogenesis that is grounded in this technology’s potential to end—or at least mitigate the effects of—gender‐based oppression. MacKay raises important issues concerning the socialization of women as ‘mothers’, and the harms that this socialization causes. She also considers ectogenesis as an ethically preferable alternative to gestational surrogacy and uterine transplantation, one that is less harmful to women and less subject to being co‐opted to further (...) oppressive ends. In this article, I challenge some of the assumptions that underlie MacKay’s case in favour of ectogenesis by questioning whether the relationship between women’s capacity to gestate and birth children and gender‐based oppression is as strong as MacKay makes it out to be. I subsequently argue that—even if MacKay’s reading of this relationship is accurate—ectogenesis is not a desirable means to end gender‐based oppression. It embodies a strategy that could be used to pursue liberating projects that follow what Iris Marion Young defines as ‘the ideal of assimilation’, but that must be resisted. I then concur with MacKay’s contention that ectogenesis is better than gestational surrogacy and uterine transplantation. My argument is that many of the problematic issues that MacKay herself sees as features of these practices will not disappear with ectogenesis. Finally, I conclude that MacKay’s narrow focus on women’s biology and ectogenesis as a solution to gender‐based oppression results in the overlooking of broader systemic issues that contribute to the upholding of oppressive norms. (shrink)

From a radical feminist perspective, gender is a cage. Or to be more precise, it’s two cages. If genders are cages, then surely we want to let people out. Being less constrained in our choices is something we all have reason to want: theorists in recent years have emphasized the importance of the capability to do and be many different things. At the very least, we should want an end to sex-based oppression. But what does this entail, (...) when it comes to gender? In this paper, I’ll compare four ‘transitional pathways’, with a view to considering how each relates to the ultimate end of ending sex-based oppression. Should we open the doors to the cages, so that people can move freely between them, but leave the cages themselves in place?. Should we add more cages?. Should we make the cages bigger, so that people have a lot more room to move around inside them? Or should we dismantle the cages, so there are no more genders at all?. Some of these options are ‘gender revisionist’, others are gender abolitionist. I’ll argue in favour of a gender abolitionist pathway. (shrink)

The pervasiveness of gender-based violence (GBV) against women and children constitutes the most severe expression of discrimination and dehumanisation of women and children in South Africa. Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic came, domestic violence was already one of the greatest human rights violations. Women for centuries suffered different forms of violation and continue to struggle in subtle forms in the 21st century. This article investigates the sociocultural theories, narrative reflections and COVID-19 pandemic challenges associated with (...) the prevalence of GBV in South Africa. The article argues that patriarchal culture, religion, gender norms, lockdown and violence in South Africa perpetuate gender-based abuse. Therefore, the article unfolds this research through a literature review and narrative approach which is used to allow the co-researchers to share their stories. The article embarks on sociocultural experiences, the scourge of GBV in South Africa, the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, qualitative interviews and theological reflections and concludes by suggesting future possibilities to fight GBV.Contribution: This article contributes to an understanding that abafazi nabantwana baphefumla ngenxeba [women and children are breathing through the wound] amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. It discusses the prevalence of GBV, the intersection of religious cultural effects, social sciences, gender inequality and the continued oppression of women and children. (shrink)

In his influential work on critical argumentation, Douglas Walton explains how to judge whether an argumentum ad verecundiam is fallacious or legitimate. He provides six critical questions and a number of ancillary sub-questions to guide the identification of reasonable appeals to authority. While it is common for informal logicians to acknowledge the role of bias in sampling procedures and hypothesis confirmation , there is a conspicuous lack of discourse on the effect of identity prejudice on judgments of authority, even though (...) this is a well-documented factor in attributing credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and professional competence to oppressed groups. This could result in faulty judgments of ad verecundiam fallacy. Focusing on gender bias, I review recent works in feminist epistemology—particularly those of Miranda Fricker and Helen Longino —to develop three gender-based critical questions to supplement Walton’s original list of six. This addition will help us to identify erroneous dismissals of appeals to authority based on epistemic injustice and epistemic irresponsibility on the part of the speaker or knowledge community. This project promotes the overlapping aims of feminist epistemology and informal logic. (shrink)

This chapter is an extended version (almost 2x in length) of an essay first published in Australasian Philosophical Review. -/- Abstract: In On Female Body Experience, Iris Marion Young argues that a central aim of feminist and queer theory is social criticism. The goal is to understand oppression and how it functions: know thy enemy, so as to better resist. Much of Sally Haslanger’s work shares this goal, and her newest article, “Cognition as a Social Skill,” is no exception. (...) In this essay, I will specify what I believe is special and insightful about Haslanger’s theory of oppression and her most recent addition to it. However, I also explore what it is missing, namely, an account of what Young calls “individual [embodied] experience, subjectivity, and identity.” Echoing a chorus of critical voices, I argue that this omission undermines Haslanger’s ability to effectively theorize group oppression and how to resist it. The core problem is this. Haslanger privileges a third-person methodology that prioritizes social structures over all else. I conclude by amplifying a collective call to action: any adequate theory of oppression must attend to both the lived experiences of individuals and to social structures, that is, to the broad institutional and cultural underpinnings of oppression. A theory that does only one, or the other, will fail. Through this analysis, the chapter contributes to an overall aim of this volume, namely, to advance our understanding of racial and gender-based group oppressions by paying closer attention to facts about embodiment. (shrink)

Among feminist philosophers, there are two lines of argument that sexist values are illegitimate in science, focusing on epistemic or ethical problems. This article supports a third framework, elucidating how value-laden science can enable epistemic oppression. My analysis demonstrates how purported knowledge laden with sexist values can compromise epistemic autonomy and contribute to paternalism and misogyny. I exemplify these epistemic wrongs with a case study of the morning-after pill during its 2006 switch to over-the-counter availability and its new drug (...) label from the US Food and Drug Administration that it “may prevent implantation.” Antiabortion science advisers created this label to protect zygotes based on debated value judgments that were later concealed. This zygote-centric knowledge enabled them to shape potential users by instructing “good mothers” that they ought to protect zygotes and punishing “bad mothers” by refusing their requests for the drug. Therefore, I argue that the sexist values and gender norms of antiabortionists that prioritize zygotic health are illegitimate in this context because they cause epistemic injustices and perpetuate epistemic oppression. Furthermore, I advocate against blanket protections for the “right to conscience” and “religious freedom” of healthcare providers because they reinforce the epistemic oppression of women, especially those on the margins.Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault and refusals to provide contraception to patients, including survivors. (shrink)

Sex, Love, and Gender is the first volume to present a comprehensive philosophical theory that brings together all of Kant's practical philosophy — found across his works on ethics, justice, anthropology, history, and religion — and provide a critique of emotionally healthy and morally permissible sexual, loving, gendered being. By rethinking Kant's work on human nature and making space for sex, love, and gender within his moral accounts of freedom, the book shows how, despite his austere and even (...) anti-sex, cisist, sexist, and heterosexist reputation, Kant's writings on happiness and virtue (Part I) and right (Part II) in fact yield fertile philosophical ground on which we can explore specific contemporary issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, sexual or gendered identity, marriage, trade in sexual services, and sex- or gender-based oppression. Indeed, Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves. Structured on a thematic basis, with introductions to assist those new to Kant's philosophy, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone who cares about these issues and wants to make sense of them. -/- Alternatively: Sex, Love, and Gender identifies a set of possibilities that define human beings’ sexuality. These sets come with their own concepts, which specify how the possibilities are realized and what effects they have on our lives lived together. Partly the task is descriptive. The description has to be plausible. Plausibility comes from the phenomenology (and not the other way around). Partly the task is normative. The normative content also has to be plausible. Plausibility here comes from vindicating the principles that underwrite the possibilities that define human beings’ sexualities and sexual experiences and behaviors lived by human beings and from the philosophical explanations and conclusions that follow. Overall plausibility, then, comes from discursive analysis of alternatives, from a priori argument, and, in the evaluative case, from showing how the Kantian account of a good life fits with reasonable conceptions of goodness consistent with the phenomenology of human lives. Although this exploration leads us, as we will see, to most corners of Kant’s practical philosophy, including his metaethics and metaphysics, the main focus is on an account of human sex, love, and gender explored explicitly with respect to happiness and ethics (virtue) and justice (right). It is because of this focus that the book is divided into two parts: Part 1 (“Human Sexuality and Virtue”) and Part 2 (“Human Sexuality and Right”). (shrink)

The conclusion of Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood’s 2007 book, Controversies in Feminist Theology, noted that ‘The future of feminist theologies are assured while gender and sexual oppression exist’.1 Yet, they also spoke of a number of challenges to the field, specifically difference in methodologies, varied nomenclature and terminologies, and stereotyping among its practitioners. I would add another: that the nature of bias itself is not uniform nor homogeneous but is largely treated as such by contextual theologians. In (...) this article the challenge presented by the presupposition that ‘a bias-is-a-bias’ is addressed from an epistemological one that attempts to delve into the nature of bias, beginning with the question: if the root nature of the problem, that is bias, is not homogeneous but rather reflects the interplay of different types of biases, does not gender oppression call for more comprehensive solutions beyond solidarity or justice? While justice-based solutions called for by feminist theologies are certainly valid and necessary, perhaps they function more as short-term solutions to a much larger dialectic, one that requires a more comprehensive grace-based approach. This article explores this idea and humbly offers a few methodological reflections. (shrink)

I propose, defend and illustrate a principle of gender justice meant to capture the nature of a variety of injustices based on gender: A society is gender just only if the costs of a gender-neutral lifestyle are, all other things being equal, lower than, or at most equal to, the costs of gendered lifestyles. The principle is meant to account for the entire range of gender injustice: violence against women, economic and legal discrimination, domestic (...) exploitation, the gendered division of labor and gendered socialization. The sense of “costs” employed is similarly wide. Costs can be material , psychological and social . I defend the principle by appeal to the values at the core of liberal egalitarian justice: equality of access and the good of individual choice. I illustrate my case through a discussion of the injustice of a gendered division of labor. Some feminists doubt that liberal egalitarianism has the theoretical resources to recognize the unjust nature of the gendered division of labor. I argue that it does. If the principle advanced here is correct, then gender injustice is pervasive. At the same, it does not affect only women but also men. Liberal egalitarianism is capable of acknowledging this fact without denying that, overall, gender norms oppress women more than they oppress men: Arguably, women who wish to lead a gender-neutral lifestyle have to pay higher costs that men who wish to do the same. (shrink)

I propose, defend and illustrate a principle of gender justice meant to capture the nature of a variety of injustices based on gender:A society is gender just only if the costs of a gender-neutral lifestyle are, all other things being equal, lower than, or at most equal to, the costs of gendered lifestyles.The principle is meant to account for the entire range of gender injustice: violence against women, economic and legal discrimination, domestic exploitation, the (...) gendered division of labor and gendered socialization. The sense of “costs” employed is similarly wide. Costs can be material, psychological and social.I defend the principle by appeal to the values at the core of liberal egalitarian justice: equality of access and the good of individual choice. I illustrate my case through a discussion of the injustice of a gendered division of labor. Some feminists doubt that liberal egalitarianism has the theoretical resources to recognize the unjust nature of the gendered division of labor. I argue that it does.If the principle advanced here is correct, then gender injustice is pervasive. At the same, it does not affect only women but also men. Liberal egalitarianism is capable of acknowledging this fact without denying that, overall, gender norms oppress women more than they oppress men: Arguably, women who wish to lead a gender-neutral lifestyle have to pay higher costs that men who wish to do the same. (shrink)

One popular strategy of opposition to practices of female genital cutting (FCG) is rooted in the global feminist movement. Arguing that women’s rights are human rights, global feminists contend that practices of FGC are a culturally specific manifestation of gender-based oppression that violates a number of rights. Many African feminists resist a women’s rights approach. They argue that by focusing on gender as the primary axis of oppression affecting the African communities where FGC occurs, a (...) women’s rights approach has misrepresented African women as passive victims who need to be rescued from African men and has obscured the role of certain international institutions that have perpetuated the oppression of African women. In this paper, I defend these critiques by arguing that the use of a women’s rights framework to combat practices of female genital cutting among African communities has often been practically ineffective and morally inappropriate. (shrink)

Open Access: This article argues for an aesthetic approach to resisting oppression based on judgments of bodily unattractiveness. Philosophical theories have often suggested that appropriate aesthetic judgments should converge on sets of objects consensually found to be beautiful or ugly. The convergence of judgments about human bodies, however, is a significant source of injustice, because people judged to be unattractive pay substantial social and economic penalties in domains such as education, employment and criminal justice. The injustice is compounded (...) by the interaction between standards of attractiveness and gender, race, disability, and gender identity. -/- I argue that we should actively work to reduce our participation in standard aesthetic practices that involve attractiveness judgments. This does not mean refusing engagement with the embodiment of others; ignoring someone’s embodiment is often a way of dehumanizing them. Instead, I advocate a form of practice, aesthetic exploration, that involves seeking out positive experiences of the unique aesthetic affordances of all bodies, regardless of whether they are attractive in the standard sense. I argue that there are good ethical reasons to cultivate aesthetic exploration, and that it is psychologically plausible that doing so would help to alleviate the social injustice attending judgments of attractiveness. -/- This essay was the winner of the 30th Anniversary of the American Society for Aesthetics Feminist Caucus Committee Feminist Research Essay prize in 2020. (shrink)

In the summer and autumn of 2015, I met with activists in Athens and Thessaloniki, with the aim of collaboratively producing a conceptual mapping of LGBTQ social movement discourses. My point of entry was the use and signification of “racism” in LGBTQ discourses (and more generally in common parlance in Greek) as a superordinate or “umbrella” concept that includes “homophobic” and “transphobic” but also “misogynist,” “ageist,” “ableist,” and class- or status-based prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, in addition to that, (...) of course, based on “race” or “ethnicity.” As a political theorist whose work over the past decade has focused on the concept of intersectionality, its origins in US Black feminist thought, and its transnational travel beyond the Anglo-American context in which it originated, I wanted to examine how this use of “racism” relates to the concept of “intersectionality” which is now emergent in the Greek social movement context, in particular in LGBTQ and feminist discourses, yet which has not been engaged by academics, neither in the nascent and struggling field of gender studies, nor in legal theory. How do LGBTQ activists define the referential scope and semantic contents of these concepts, based on what knowledges grounded in lived experiences, and on what kinds of social movement strategies? How do these concepts and their theoretical underpinnings reflect or direct activists’ political resistance to the widespread violence that they identify within and on the borders of Greek society? Do they enable coalition-building with other minoritised groups targeted by institutional and interpersonal “racism”? In approaching these questions, I wanted to trace the ways in which my interlocutors produce theories, through which social conditions of racial and heteropatriarchal power are made visible, are explained, and are contested—conditions that they identify with the institutions—“nation, religion, and family”—that make up what they termed the “triptych” or the “syntax of power.” What emerged in my conversations with activists were vivid accounts of the atmospheric violence facing LGBTQ people in Greece, its institutional and interpersonal manifestations, both banal and extreme. Indeed, many activists defined violence as the quintessence of oppression as such, and as what links various systems or forms of oppression—or, “racisms”—to one another. In what follows, I draw on these conversations not to answer the questions with which I set out, but, primarily, those that my interlocutors generated, which concern, ultimately, the unlivability of queer and trans lives—the violence LGBTQ people face and resist, particularly at the intersections of youth, poverty, disability, rurality, racialisation, criminalisation, and patriarchy. (shrink)

Basic characteristic of Islamic heritage law, principally it has accepted the two-to-one ratio between the male and the female children/siblings in division of heritage. In Islamic inheritance law, the main/basic reason why the share of the male is twice the share of the female is no “value” judgments given to female/women in creation and gender in Islam, on the contrary, are real realities related with the roles and financial obligations that man and woman have undertaken, in other words, related (...) with “socio-economic structure/fact” in the family and society structure foreseen by Islam. As a matter of fact, “need principle” is based on in division and succession of heritageand a fair arrangement has been made in accordance with the rights and responsibilities of the husband and wife in Islamic Law. In some classical tafsīr books, the concept of “degree” in the verse “... Men have a degree (right) over women” (Al-Baqara 2/228) mentioning the mutual rights and responsibilities of women and men; and the expression of “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” in the verse –the inheritance of man is the share of two women– (Al-Nisā 4/11) mentioning the inheritance shares of boys and girls is interpreted against the woman by disregarding the intended purpose and socio-economic contexts of these verses. As a result of this interpretation, the share of men in inheritance is twice the share of women in Islamic law is ontologically (existential/creation) based on a justification that “man is superior to woman”. In this article/study, an analyticallook atthe interpretations in some classical tafsīr books on the axis of “daraja/degree” and “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” that today sheds light on the sociological-historical background of depriving the daughter from the heritage will be made. Summary: Just as there is no way to determine a person’s sex, it is not either possible by reason to have such an opportunity. - With the possibility of medical intervention nowadays - sex is determined by the discretion of the Supreme Creator rather than will. Indeed, it is mentioned in the Qur’ān: To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth; He creates what he wills. He gives to whom He wills female [children], and He gives to whom He wills males (Al-Shūrā 42/49.)In addition to human biological sex, there is also social gender. Indeed, the term “sex” refers to being biologically female or male, while the term "gender" refers to the social and cultural identity of a woman or man, or the social roles that occur in the historical process.Accordingly, while it is not possible to determine biological sex (in normal circumstances in advance), determining gender is shaped by the cultural will of individuals and societies. As a matter of fact, gender is shaped according to the religions, customs and cultures of the societies and it shows differences according to time, culture and family structure. In this context, in the pre-Islamic Arab society, the gender of the girl or the woman was shaped by the custom of the ritual and customs. Indeed, it is a known fact that during the period of Jahiliyyah, in terms of social gender, the girl/woman has been deprived of many social and economic rights, especially heritage. The Qur’ān has brought the girls who, in the period of Jahiliyyah, were oppressed in terms of gender, deprived of many social and economical rights, treated as second class human, embarrassed of themselves and buried alive, to the same position as man. In this context, as it is in every field in the direction of social structure and social conditions of that day, also in the field of inheritance law, a number of regulations were made in the Qur’ān and the Sunnah being the main sources of Islam. The divisions of the inheritance were connected with religious and legal rules and the shares of the inheritance of the sons and daughters were determined by naṣṣ (verses and hadiths).However, in Islamic inheritance law, as a requirement of the structure of family and society accepted by Islam, in principle, “two-to-one” measures have been adopted between male and female children. As a matter of fact, in this aspect, it is mentioned in the Qur’ān: Allah instructs you concerning your children: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females (Al-Nisā 4/11.)On one hand, the principle that Islamic law brings between boys and girls; Seems to be an inequality in terms of the arrangement in which "the inheritance share of the male child is twice the share of the female child", while on the other hand, within the border of in the family foreseen by Islam, this regulation has not been seen as an injustice and inequity by Muslim societies, because in Islamic family law, a man is obliged to ensure the livelihood of the family after marriage. He is also obliged to give his wife her mahr when marrying.In Islamic inheritance law, “necessity principle” is taken as the basis of responsibility that women and man have undertaken in family and society. Therefore, even though giving nothing at all to those who are not in need and giving less to those who are in less need, giving too much to those who are in much need might seem contrary to the principle of equality, it is a necessity of the principle of justice and fairness. As a matter of fact, while "law equality, necessity in sharing" principle, law is arranged according to people's qualifications, goods and wealth sharing is divided according to the needs of people. In this context, there has been a fair division in Islamic heritage law based on the necessity, (distributive) justice and fairness principle. Indeed, the French philosopher Roger Garaudy (1913-2012), who chose /converted to Islam, evaluates the following about the proportion of male child in the Qur'an to that of female child: “When we consider that in the Arab society all the obligations of the family and of the care of the parents and of all the things that we call ‘social security’ today are put on the shoulders of the husband, the hereditary male child's share must be twice as high as the female child’s is”.As Garaudy argues, the difference in the inheritance of women and men in Islamic inheritance law is not a legal discrimination/inequality, but a form of divisiveness stemming from a need based on the role and responsibility that women and men have undertaken in the family and society. Therefore, giving nothing to those who need nothing, giving little to those who need little, and giving a lot to those who need a lot,even though may seem contradictious to the principle of equality, it becomes a necessity of equity and (distributive) justice principle. In this case, in Islamic inheritance law, the basic reason why the share of the male child is twice the share of the female child, is social and economic reasons and it is possible to rank them as follows:1) According to Islamic law, women are not obliged to make their own economic livelihoods. The woman’s economic responsibility belongs to her father or brothers before marriage, and then to her husband after marriage. 2) When a woman is married she is not responsible for herself or other family members’ livelihood. The male is obliged to make a living for himself, his wife and his children.3) While married, the male is obliged to give the wife mahr. The woman has no such responsibility.As it is understood from the above explanations, in Islamic inheritance law, the basic reason why the share of the male child is twice the share of the female child is not about the ontologically “value” based on creation and sex given to the woman (girl child) in Islam. On the contrary, it is the real facts concerning the family and society structure that Islam predicts, the roles and financial obligations that man and woman have undertaken, namely “socio-economic structure/fact”.In some commentaries in classical commentary books, the rights and responsibilities of women and men are referred to, like: the word “degree” mentioned in: …but the men have a degree over them [in responsibility and authority (Al-Baqara 2/228), and the talk about the inheritance shares of boys and girls in: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females (Al-Nisā 4/11). Eventually, the concepts “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” have been associated with the gender of the woman/girl child ontologically (based on social fact) by ignoring the referent purpose and socio-economic contexts of these verses. As a result of these interpretations, it was desired that the Islamic law principle of inheritance share of male child being twice the share of female child, ontologically, should be based on a justification that “man is superior to woman”.In this study, some of the era’s dominant culture classical interpretations grounding women's inheritances share on her gender and based on the axis of the concepts of "degree" and “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” in the related verses of the Qur'ān will be elaborated. (shrink)

The hermeneutic resources necessary for understanding Indigenous women’s lives in Latin America have been obscured by the tools of Western feminist philosophical practices and their travel in North-South contexts. Not only have ongoing practices of European colonization disrupted pre-colonial ways of knowing, but colonial lineages create contemporary public policies, institutions, and political structures that reify and solidify colonial epistemologies as the only legitimate forms of knowledge. I argue that understanding this foreclosure of Amerindian linguistic communities’ ability to collectively engage in (...) interpretive processes of culture and be heard and understood as coherent is an essential background condition to conceiving and theorizing the multiplicity of social oppressions and their intersections in contemporary Latin American contexts. Further, the work of disrupting and disobeying colonial interpretive frameworks has long been practiced by Indigenous women in Latin America, whose testimonies and expressions have been made sub-audible by design in colonial systems of meaning-making. This is part of the extensive legacy of the long quillwork of communal alphabets of survival. (shrink)

This book draws on the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer to inform a feminist perspective of social identities. Lauren Swayne Barthold moves beyond answers that either defend the objective nature of identities or dismiss their significance altogether. Building on the work of both hermeneutic and non-hermeneutic feminist theorists of identity, she asserts the relevance of concepts like horizon, coherence, dialogue, play, application, and festival for developing a theory of identity. This volume argues that as intersubjective interpretations, social identities are vital ways (...) of fostering meaning and connection with others. Barthold also demonstrates how a hermeneutic approach to social identities can provide critiques of and resistance to identity-based oppression. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Oppression, Normative Violence, and VulnerabilityThe Ambiguous Beauvoirian Legacy of Butler’s EthicsLisa C. KniselyJudith Butler’s most recent writings are a sophisticated theorization of the significance of human vulnerability as a resource for “a non-violent ethics... that is based upon an understanding of how easily human life is annulled” (Butler 2004, xvii). Butler argues that recognition of the constitutive vulnerability of human existence provides the condition of possibility through (...) which we can respond to an ethical “appeal” or “call” for nonviolence (Butler 2009, 165, 170). This recent work carries on the feminist theoretical tradition of theorizing nonviolence via an attention to human vulnerability that has been strongly present in feminist care ethics (Held 2006; Kittay 1999; Ruddick 1989; Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). However, rather than turning to the care ethicists to think through the ethical relationship between vulnerability and violence, Butler produces an innovative feminist ethics by turning to a variety of thinkers in continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, such as Hegel, Freud, Cavarero, and especially Levinas. Butler’s recent discussion of the ethical import of human vulnerability therefore extends a long-standing feminist tradition of arguing for nonviolence while also helping to expand the theoretical resources feminists have used for this task.This article places Butler’s recent ethical focus on nonviolence1 in conversation with Simone de Beauvoir’s earlier existentialist feminist ethical writings2 [End Page 145] concerning the ethico-political import of violence. Together, these two thinkers reorient the dominant feminist conversation about violence away from an emphasis on women’s violent and oppressive victimization and toward an idea of gendered actors who are simultaneously ethically enabled and constrained by the bodily, historical, and political situations out of which they act. Ultimately, however, Beauvoir’s argument that ethics are always deeply contextual and are thus normatively ambiguous is a preferable feminist alternative to Butler’s attempt to delineate a specifically nonviolent ethics. This is because Beauvoir gives thorough attention to contexts of oppression as a major mitigating factor that shapes our ethical possibilities.For Beauvoir, there is no guarantee that a nonviolent response to vulnerability is a priori the most ethical response. Beauvoir does not insist on a nonviolent ethics because the ethicality of violence must be derived from within the embodied situations out of which people are acting. Ethicality cannot be determined prior to, or outside of, the lived contexts in which people are situated. Beauvoir’s ethics remind contemporary feminist theorists that both vulnerability, and responses to vulnerability, whether violent or nonviolent, are always contextually mediated by the forces of history, politics, and circumstance. This reminder is essential if we do not wish feminist ethical claims to override the feminist political goal of lessening oppression. Beauvoir’s attention to contextual specificity shows us that our possible responses to vulnerability are ethically ambiguous in the sense that no normative claim about how one ought to respond to human vulnerability, taken in the abstract, can be elucidated without the risk of making our ethics potentially oppressive.By returning to Beauvoir’s ethics, especially Beauvoir’s attention to oppression and freedom, the discussion here is meant to echo the concerns of a growing number of contemporary feminist theorists who express hesitation about the recent “turn” to vulnerability in feminist theory (Bergoffen 2001; Butler 2004, 2005, 2009; Fineman 2008; Oliver 2008)3 and more generally about moral claims that are made in the name of feminism (Murphy 2009; Dean 2008; Halley 2008; Mills 2007; Brown 1995). In addition, the emphasis on Beauvoir’s ethics here is meant to help return the contemporary feminist discussion of violence toward a more general emphasis on the importance of thinking about freedom as a primary feminist concern (Zerilli 2005; Willett 2001, 1995). Beauvoir’s ethics demonstrate that the ethicality of our responses to vulnerability cannot be judged without a thorough attention to the ethical freedom4 of oppressed ethical actors.Feminist ethicists have tended to undervalue attention to specific historico-political contexts in their discussions of violence as they develop normative arguments against violence. As Kimberly Hutchings notes in her article “Simone de Beauvoir and the Ambiguous Ethics of Political Violence,” there are two contemporary feminist positions on violence... (shrink)

The American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct places ethical obligations upon psychologists based on another’s “age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language or socioeconomic status.” This article explores 18 major problems with ethical prescriptions contained in the Ethical Code involving this phrase, including problems in clarity, inconsistency, comprehensiveness, its epistemic assumptions, and its impossibility for adherence, among others.

Background:The pressing issue of aged care has made gendered caregiving a growing subject of feminist bioethical enquiry. However, the impact of feminism on empirical studies in the area of gendered care in Chinese sociocultural contexts has been less influential.Objectives:To examine female members’ lived experiences of gendered care in rural China and offer proper normative evaluation based on their experiences.Research design:This article adopted an empirical ethical approach that integrates ethnographical investigation and feminist ethical inquiry.Participants and research context:This article focused on (...) three cases of gendered caregiving for sick older members collected from a 6-month fieldwork conducted in a primary hospital in rural China.Ethical consideration:Approval was obtained from the university ethics committee.Findings:The empirical work highlights caregivers’ voices of weiqu (a sense of unfairness) resulting from their constrained choice when being pressured to engage in caregiving, which is associated with a disadvantageous socio-institutional and structural backdrop in current rural China. Informed by the conception of structural injustice, the normative analysis of this article traced various forms of social norms, structural deficiencies and ageing welfare institutions, as they intertwine and transmit into additional care deficiencies against rural families and their female caregivers.Conclusion:This article identified the constraint of gender hierarchy and its intersection with external social structure that exacerbate gendered oppression and exploitation of female labour in rural China. Normatively, this article argues that the current configuration of rural family care, featured by structural impediments and exploration of female labour, is unjust. Some policy recommendations are proposed to empower caregivers and advance care for rural older people. (shrink)

This discussion of Sally Haslanger’s recent book, Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (Oxford 2012), investigates how her theory of race and gender handles the problem of intersectionality; that is, the problem of how to understand the ways in which one’s location in multiple socially constructed categories affects one’s lived experiences, social roles, and relative privilege or disadvantage. Haslanger defines race and gender as locations within hierarchical social structures. This high-level structural analysis allows her to find commonality (...) without claiming that, for example, all women share social roles or psychological characteristics. However, race-based oppression seems sometimes to cancel out gender-based privilege; thus raising the question of how, on Haslanger’s model, we are to understand race and gender working together. (shrink)

This volume sets out to explore, propose, and generate feminist theories based on African indigenous philosophies and concepts. It investigates specific philosophical and ethical concepts that emerge from African Indigenous Religions and considers their potential for providing feminist imagination for social-justice oriented Earth Communities. The contributions examine African indigenous concepts such as Ubuntu, ancestorhood, trickster discourse, storytelling, and ngozi. They look to deconstruct oppressive social categories of gender, class, ethnicity, race, colonialism, heteronormativity, and anthropocentricism. The book will be (...) of interest to scholars of religion, philosophy, gender studies, and African studies. (shrink)

Why do people hate one another? Who gets to speak for whom? Why do so many people combat prejudice based on their race, sexual orientation, or disability? What does segregation look like today? Many of us ponder and discuss urgent questions such as these at home, and see them debated in the media, the classroom, and our social media feeds, but many of us don't have access to the important new ways philosophers are thinking about these very issues. Enter (...) UnMute, the popular podcast hosted by Myisha Cherry, which hosts a diverse group of philosophers and explores their cutting-edge work through casual conversation. -/- This book collects 31 of Cherry's lively and timely interviews, offering an accessible resource through which to encounter some of philosophy's most socially and politically engaged, public-facing work. Its original illustrations, depicting the interview subjects up close, show just how broad a range of philosophers--black, white, and brown, male and female, queer and straight, abled and disabled--are at the center of crucial contemporary conversations. Cherry asks philosophers to talk about their ideas in ways that anyone can understand, explaining how they got interested in philosophy, and why the questions they investigate matter urgently. -/- Along with the interviews, the volume provides a foreword by Cornel West, a section in which all the interviewees explain how they got into philosophy, and a "Say What?" glossary defining terms that might be new to some readers. Like the podcast that inspired it, the book welcomes in those new to these philosophical questions, those captivated by questions of race, class, gender, and other issues and looking for a new lens through which to examine them, and those well-versed in public philosophy looking for a one-stop guide. (shrink)

Mexican machismo and its vulgar folklore have long been of interest to students of Mexican culture. This article, based on research among a group of undocumented male workers, reexamines one aspect of this folklore - its degradation of women - and proposes that, besides legitimizing the oppression of women, it plays an ideological role in class conflict. The article argues that, as a signifying system unique to working-class male culture, the folklore of machismo symbolically conflates class and (...) class='Hi'>gender by shifting the point of conflict from the public domain of the former to the domestic domain of the latter. (shrink)

For most of nineteenth-century socialists, whose writings are examined in the scope of this paper, women’s equality with men was understood mainly in terms of their equal participation in the working collective. However, this concept of equality left unexamined the sexual division of labor by which men are central to production and women are central to reproduction. In the process of change towards a new socialist society, women were given the additional role of workers, but the bases of the unequal (...) gender order were never contested. (shrink)

Rationalism is the key to the connected oppressions of women and nature in the West. Deep ecology has failed to provide an adequate historical perspective or an adequate challenge to human/nature dualism. A relational account of self enables us to reject an instrumental view of nature and develop an alternative based on respect without denying that nature is distinct from the self. This shift of focus links feminist, environmentalist, and certain forms of socialist critiques. The critique of anthropocentrism is (...) not sacrificed, as deep ecologists argue, but enriched. (shrink)

The position I defend in this paper is that both prisoners and ex-prisoners, at least within present U.S. society, experience a form of oppression that can be distinguished from that inflicted upon other structurally disadvantaged groups. As a result of these U.S. conditions, I also argue that those who have not been or are not currently incarcerated may possess some unearned advantages, similar to but also different from other forms of privilege, such as those based upon race, class, (...) gender, sexuality, and ability. In the first section, I investigate three definitions of oppression to articulate my thesis of prisoner oppression, using the work of Marilyn Frye, Kenneth Clatterbaugh, and Ann E. Cudd. In the second section, I respond to three objections against my thesis. I conclude in the third section with some thoughts on how the preceding arguments should affect the dominant discourse regarding prison reform and abolition. (shrink)

This paper seeks to make “racism” strange, by exploring its invocation in the sociolinguistic context of LGBTQI+ activism in Greece, where it is used in ways that may be jarring to anglophone readers. In my ongoing research on the conceptualisation of interwoven oppressions in Greek social movement contexts, I have been interested in understanding how the widespread use of the term “racism” as a superordinate category to reference forms of oppression not only based on “race,” “ethnicity,” and “citizenship” (...) (e.g., racism, nationalism, xenophobia) but also those based on gender, gender identity, and sexuality (e.g., sexism, transphobia, and homophobia) relates to the increased adoption of “intersectionality” in movement discourses. In ordinary parlance, this commonplace usage of “racism” as an “umbrella term” nevertheless retains its etymological link to “race,” while its scope is extended to other regimes of superiority/inferiority or privilege/oppression. If intersectionality presupposes that oppressions are ontologically multiple and analytically separable, the use of “racism” as an umbrella concept seems to point in the other direction, implying that all forms of oppression originate from a common source, have a similar ontological basis, or generate privilege for the same social agents, who deploy similar tactics vis-à-vis oppressed groups. My research examines how intersectionality—widely understood as a multi-axial theory of oppression, which contends that power relations are multiple, distinct, and irreducible to one another, yet converge simultaneously in the experiences of multiply oppressed social groups—relates to the use of “racism” as a struggle concept in Greek, but also in other languages commonly used in Greece, such as Albanian (racizmi) and Arabic (eunsuria). In this paper, I examine how these two vocabularies—of racism and intersectionality—are operative in movement discourses, but also how they shape, and are shaped by activists’ perceptions, analyses, and theories of oppression. (shrink)

Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize developing and Muslim societies. Based on ethnographic data collected from women teachers from rural and low-income communities of Pakistan, the article shows how being a parhi likhi woman implies acquiring a privileged subject position making claims to middle-class and Islamic morality, and engaging in specific struggles within, rather than against, the institutions of family, community, and Islam. This focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women complicates (...) the prevalent narrative of modernity that presents women’s education and gender empowerment as an expression of individual women’s choice and free will against the oppressive frameworks of family, community, and Islam. (shrink)

This article considers what the implications of decertification would be for single-sex services such as domestic and sexual violence support. Some reform options attached to decertification could (re)allocate authority away from the state to organisations or individuals to determine gender criteria. What would the consequences of such re-allocation be in determining eligibility to receive or access services or excluding people on the basis of a characteristic protected under equality law? Engaging with this in the context of domestic and sexual (...) violence support service provision raises a number of questions. Firstly, does the existence of gender-based violence and/or of the effects it produces require a stable category in order to address them? What benefits may emerge from providing single-sex spaces that could not be replicated in other settings? And finally, what criteria of exclusion and inclusion are currently used to determine access to spaces beyond legal gender status? (shrink)

Feminist scholars have identified how race and gender discourses influence the creation and implementation of school-based sexual health education and the provision of health care, yet there are few studies that examine how race and gender work in sexual health promotion as it occurs through community-based public health efforts. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research in a low-income Puerto Rican community, this article demonstrates how a gendered racial project of essentializing Latinx culture surrounding young women’s (...) sexuality and reproduction works to both obscure and reinforce race and racism in sexual health promotion. Professional stakeholders mobilize culture as an explanation for high birth rates among young Latinas in the city and reproduce a “Latino culture narrative” in which Latina gender and sexuality is understood as deterministic and homogenous. Simultaneously, an ideology of colorblindness enables the uncritical promotion of long-acting reversible contraception and obscures the history of reproductive oppression experienced by women of color. I consider how colorblindness and culture narratives allow stakeholders to abdicate responsibility for gendered racial inequality and conclude by advocating for the incorporation of racial and reproductive justice frameworks in sexual health promotion. (shrink)

Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings (...) from our analyses of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure. (shrink)

Using the corpus of JSTOR articles, we investigate the role of gender in collaboration patterns across the scholarly landscape by analyzing gender-based homophily--the tendency for researchers to co-author with individuals of the same gender. For a nuanced analysis of gender homophily, we develop methodology necessitated by the fact that the data comprises heterogeneous sub-disciplines and that not all authorships are exchangeable. In particular, we distinguish three components of gender homophily in collaborations: a structural component (...) that is due to demographics and non-gendered authorship norms of a scholarly community, a compositional component which is driven by varying gender representation across sub-disciplines, and a behavioral component which we define as the remainder of observed homophily after its structural and compositional components have been taken into account. Using minimal modeling assumptions, we measure and test for behavioral homophily. We find that significant behavioral homophily can be detected across the JSTOR corpus and show that this finding is robust to missing gender indicators in our data. In a secondary analysis, we show that the proportion of female representation in a field is positively associated with significant behavioral homophily. (shrink)

Challenging the claim that policy of gender separation on buses does not imply segregation and discrimination against women but rather an innocent concern for the cultural concept of modesty, this Paper attempts first to analyze and refute the respective arguments presented by Professor Harel by establishing counter arguments and examining counter examples which may produce different conclusions. At its second stage the paper proposes a broader field of analysis for scrutinizing the justifications for gendersegregated practices that is based (...) on considerations of rationality. Its main thrust directs to the claim that from a liberal point of view, the difference between acceptable and non-acceptable practices should be depended upon two conditions: a) the rational justification of the practice. b) Its immunity to the burden of harm or oppression towards helpless individuals or groups. At its third and final part, the Paper attempts to produce a careful definition of the cultural meanings implied by the practice of gender separation. By proposing alternative conceptual structure of explanation, based on cultural phenomenological analysis, it aims to expose the deep discriminatory structure of power-relations between men and women in traditional societies, including the Ultra-Orthodox community, as exemplified by the practice of gender separation. (shrink)

In this article, which is based on twenty four months of combined online and off-line ethnographic research, I show the way that some Iranian diasporic bloggers use their weblogs as entrepreneurship resources during the ‘war on terror’. Through a discourse analysis of a documentary film about Weblogistan and interviews with diasporic Iranian bloggers in Toronto, I argue that Weblogistan is implicated in discourses of militarism and neoliberalism that interpellate the representable Iranian blogger as a gendered neoliberal homo oeconomicus. The (...) production of knowledge about Iran in transnational encounters between the media, think tanks, policy institutions and the Iranian diasporic self-entrepreneurs, relies on gendered civilizational discourses that are inherently tied to the ‘war on terror’. Following feminist scholars who have theorized militarism and gender, I argue that dominant representations of Weblogistan produce different gendered subject positions for Iranian bloggers. Although the masculine blogger soldier takes freedom to Iran through his active participation in proper politics (enabled by his freedom of speech in North America and Europe), the woman blogger finds freedom of expression in writing about sex and telling the truth of her sex in a confessional mode. It is in this war of representation that women bloggers negotiate their subjectivity while shuttling in and out of local and global politics, as subjects of politics (markers of freedom and oppression) and political abjects (not worthy of political participation). (shrink)

The mutual interaction and interdependence of race, class, and gender create profound political dilemmas for feminist activists. How can we create coherent, inclusive political movements when the very oppressions we seek to dismantle also divide us internally? This article seeks answers to this question by exploring the history of the Southeast Women's Employment Coalition, which throughout the 1980s sought to unify working-class women in the South across the divide of race. The article concludes that gender is insufficient to (...) effect political unity among racially diverse women, but that a “politics of solidarity,” based on an appreciation of the intersections of race, gender, and class, is possible. (shrink)

In today’s evolving understanding of gender, questions arise about the future of the feminist movement. Using Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Hugh Ryan's “Who's Afraid of Social Contagion,” and Ben Kesslen’s “How the Idea of a 'Transgender Contagion' Went Viral—and Caused Untold Harm,” this paper explores the concept of the Other to analyze social contagion and gender-based oppression. It argues that while feminism must adapt, its future lies in embracing the experiences of all classified as (...) the Other. Through de Beauvoir's work, historical definitions of gender, and social constructivism, this paper proposes a new idea for the future of feminism. (shrink)

Gender-based Violence is a huge concern in many African countries such as Zimbabwe despite the preventative and mitigatory interventions that have been proposed and implemented by various stakeholders. The interventions applied range from policies and programmes that are government initiated as well as those interventions by social actors such as non-government organisations and Faith-based Organisations like churches. Gender-based violence as a social structural issue is sustained and perpetuated by cultural norms, values and beliefs that are (...) fed by patriarchy, among other things. To effectively respond to the situation, interventions should target multiple social levels, including policy, government officials’ attitudes, individual men and women, families, community leaders and structures and social institutions such as churches. Churches are a critical community social institution that could play a pivotal role in addressing GBV. To position churches as players on public issues such as GBV, the questions that emerge are: ‘What is the role of the church in a public problem such as GBV? How could churches conceive and perform a public ministerial role that addresses GBV?’ To respond to these questions, this article employs the idea of public pastoral care as a nexus that churches could utilise in performing a community and public role function in contributing towards addressing GBV. Firstly, the article sketches the context of GBV in Zimbabwe and the various efforts to address it. Secondly, it outlines the ambivalent role of churches in GBV. Thirdly, it conceptualises the notion of public pastoral care as an approach that could be employed by churches to address GBV. Lastly, it proposes some public practical approaches that could be employed in addressing GBV by churches. (shrink)

This study aims to draw a gender based analysis of social and economic conditions of child labourers living in Karachi. Globally the issue of child labour is growing constantly and children are engaged in all sorts of hazardous forms of work, like adults, which deprives them from education, healthy life, child hood activities and balanced diet. In Pakistan the child labour is very common in all economic sectors, but it is mainly found in the informal sector and the (...) household sector. Purposive and convenience sampling techniques of non-probability sampling are used to collect data through structured questionnaire from 900 respondents from eighteen administrative districts of Karachi, which is based upon primarily quantitative and narrowly focused qualitative research methods. The findings of the study reveal that mostly children between the ages of 12 to 14 years are commonly inducted in different economic sectors. This clear violation of child rights makes them vulnerable to health and safety threats and putting them forcefully in hazardous occupations to earn bread and butter for their family by compromising their education. (shrink)

This article is a response to the Lancet Commission on the Legal Determinants of Health from gendered perspectives and focusing on gender-based violence and abuse. The Lancet Commission sees the role of law as positive, indeed central in providing justice in global contexts, and this contribution explores and unpacks this assertion, drawing on some examples from India and elsewhere. Some feminists have argued that law and justice are incompatible for women, and this is sometimes borne out when we (...) look at legal reforms and interventions in the field of gender-based violence. However, we also explore the ways in which some women have used legal reforms in creative ways to destabilize patriarchal norms, and more broadly, how absence of legal protection can undermine access to rights. We conclude that law can have a symbolic relationship with justice. (shrink)

The provisions of United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) provisions and the CEDAW Committee’s recommendations expand on the theoretical and practical ways in which countries can combat gender-based discrimination. In Pakistan, the digitisation of women and feminist collectives and their experience of violent misogyny on the internet accentuates the weakness of the country’s internet security mechanisms. This study utilises the human rights framework of CEDAW to assess the performance of Pakistan’s (...) internet security mechanisms, and highlights the state’s obligations towards women’s digital safety. Informed by the CEDAW’s provisions and the Committee’s contributions, this paper provides recommendations to combat gender-based violence and improve Pakistan’s internet security mechanisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species by Ruth VanitaBrian Black (bio)The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species. By Ruth Vanita. Oxford: Oxford Unity Press, 2021. Pp. 298. Hardcover £70.00, isbn 978-0-19-285982-2. Ruth Vanita's The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species examines how the (...) Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa discuss questions of justice. She reads the epics as bhakti texts to focus on their depictions of discrimination based on social categories such as gender, varṇa, species, age, and disability. The book claims that the epics criticize oppression in two main ways: by articulating philosophical ideas about social justice and by celebrating characters of a low social status. Six of the twelve chapters are devoted to themes related to gender, including marriage, independence, consent, gender-crossing, parenting, and masculinity. Focusing on the words and actions of characters in the narrative, Vanita does not directly address the question of whether we can take the marginal voices in the text as representing authentic voices of its social context. She also sidesteps the issue of patriarchy: "Every written text ever composed is, in the widest sense, patriarchal, since it was composed in a male-dominated society. Patriarchy is the air we breathe. Therefore, explaining the meaning of a text as patriarchal is as useful as explaining people's actions by the fact that they breathe" (p. 22). I was left wondering, however, if this explanation serves the interests of her study. In a book about oppressed characters, it seems crucial to say more about how systems of oppression operate. Even if we assume that all societies are patriarchal, this does not mean that they are all patriarchal in the same ways or to the same degree. Vanita is an imaginative reader, whose often speculative interpretations offer some valuable perspectives and raise interesting questions. One of the most refreshing features of the book is its extensive discussions of a number of characters and sub-stories rarely analyzed in scholarly literature. In particular, I enjoyed reading Vanita's take on the Mahābhārata's story of Diśā and Aṣṭāvakra (Mbh 13.19–22), where she shows her sensitivity to the ambiguities of this intriguing episode. This story, which appears in the Anuśāsana Parvan, begins when the ascetic Aṣṭāvakra wants to marry the sage Vadānya's daughter, Suprabhā. Before offering his consent, Vadānya sends Aṣṭāvakra to visit the aged female sage Diśā. As Vanita observes, this episode "maps a landscape of desire" [End Page 1] (p. 77) and raises a number of interesting questions about female sexuality as well as female independence. Vanita sees Diśā's motives, rather than merely testing Aṣṭāvakra's desires, as combining her role as a teacher with her own sexual yearnings. Vanita concludes that Diśā's message is that "desire cannot be entirely overcome" (p. 82). From this, she sees Diśā as advocating the conversion of "feverish agitation into happiness within marriage" (p. 83). Vanita's analysis of this story is both engaging and compelling, yet her claim that this episode is an integral part of Yudhiṣṭhira's education as a king remains undeveloped. I wanted to hear more about how this one story fits into the context of the countless others that Bhīṣma recounts to Yudhiṣṭhira. Moreover, her conclusion at the end of the chapter (ch. 4), that the epics "celebrate single women" (p. 85), seems a bit of a stretch considering the few examples she discusses. In chapter 6, Vanita revisits the encounter between Sulabhā and King Janaka (Mbh 12.308), which she discussed in detail twenty years ago.1 Her return to this episode examines the sexual power dynamics between the female sage and the legendary king from Upaniṣadic lore. As Vanita observes, Sulabhā takes the form of a beautiful young woman to test Janaka's claim to be liberated. Vanita explains:We may expect ordinary people to notice a person's looks first of all, but one who claims to be... (shrink)

War is an appalling crisis and destructive force on human dignity and life. War was permitted in biblical times at the hand of God, with disastrous consequences for the nations of the Ancient World. The current war between Ukraine and Russia is fast becoming a global catastrophe, with the threat of World War III looming. Warfare destroys families, and families are vital units God instituted in society. The critical issue addressed in this article is the ruining effects of gender- (...) class='Hi'>based violence (GBV) on family life. Therefore, this article responds to GBV as a social ill and destructive form of warfare against women and aims to propose feasible, viable, and practical theological ways to curb this ruinous issue. Gender-based violence, as a form of warfare against women and children, is one of the most destructive forces regarding family life and the key reason for unstable, disrupted, and fractured families. Because this article is grounded on a practical theological response, its pastoral role is explored. Practical theology builds a theological framework for critical evaluation. It also takes a more direct role on the moral debates of society on issues such as GBV, father absence, and family violence that occurs in Church, family, and society. Contribution: This article employed a descriptive modus operandi on GBV against women and endorses the journal’s focus on family and society who is experiencing a violation of human rights and a life-threatening issue in the field of Practical Theology. (shrink)

In this study, 191 subjects, 93 male and 98 female undergraduate business students, were asked to respond to a 51 item questionnaire to examine their perception of what constituted a "just society". The subjects agreed on 16 characteristics which a just society would have. Out of 51 there were only 10 statements whereon average responses showed significant differences based on gender.

South Africa continues to be plagued by gender-based violence (GBV). Recurring incidents of GBV cram news tabloids, social and electronic media, creating the impression of a country at war with itself. Of great concern is that, at the centre of these killings, men are allegedly the main culprits. This then has unleashed national protest campaigns, one notably, by the name #menaretrash, led by activists, mostly women, who angrily voice their disquiet against men. As a response, it was followed (...) by another, namely, #notinmyname, led by those, mostly men, who say, there are many good and proud men who will not allow the image of manhood to be tarnished. At risk is ‘trust’ which is an important social asset, the demise of which plunges any society into a state of parody. This article then seeks to establish the damage GBV causes in terms of trust, especially of women to men. To do this, a survey was conducted to test levels of trust under different circumstances and in respect of different categories of people and public figures. The findings partly confirm existing surveys elsewhere whilst also making contradicting and worrying revelations. The article tries to reconcile these divergent positions socioculturally and theologically and conclude with proposals towards addressing the scourge of GBV. (shrink)

Feminization in agriculture due to increased labour migration has directed the national plan toward gender-inclusive youth involvement in commercial agriculture in Nepal. To understand the willingness to pursue agriculture among such youth and gender-based differences in their opinion, a convergent parallel mixed method survey among remittance receivers from 231 households, was conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire in the Parbat district of Nepal. The willingness to pursue agriculture and factors affecting the willingness were studied using t-tests, chi-square test, (...) and spearman’s correlation. A 5-point Likert-type scale was used to measure the difference in opinion and reasons behind the willingness to pursue agriculture among the gender. The majority of women responded unwilling to pursue agriculture and factors like gender, income and education level had a significant impact on the decision. The prioritized reason for pursuing agriculture and the primary choice of the enterprise were similar but preferences in government facilities and services were found different among the gender. (shrink)

Analyses of gender-based violence during mass conflict have typically focused on violence committed against women. Violence perpetrated against men has only recently been examined as gender-based violence in its own right. Using narratives from 1,136 Darfuri refugees, we analyze patterns of gender-based violence perpetrated against men and boys during the genocide in Darfur. We examine how this violence emasculates men and boys through four mechanisms: homosexualization, feminization, genital harm, and sex-selective killing. In line with (...) an interactionist approach, we demonstrate how genocidal violence is gendered and argue that perpetrators committing gender-based violence perform masculinity in accordance with hegemonic gender norms in Sudan. We also show how gender-based violence enacts, reinforces, and creates meaning on multiple levels in a matrix of mutually reinforcing processes that we term the gender-genocide nexus. By extending the gender–violence link to the context of mass atrocity, this study facilitates an understanding of the mechanisms through which gender inequalities can be reproduced and maintained in diverse situations and structures. (shrink)

There is a growing trend across North America of women being criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes. Rather than being a series of aberrations resulting from institutional failures, we argue that this trend is part of a colonial strategy of administrative violence aimed at women of color and Native women across Turtle Island. We consider a range of medical and legal practices constituting gender-based administrative violence, and we argue that they are the result of non-accidental and systematic production of (...) population-level harms that cannot be disentangled from the goals of ongoing settler occupation and dispossession of Indigenous lands. While white feminist narratives of gender-based administrative violence in Latin America function to distance the places where such violence occurs from the ‘liberal democratic’ settler nation-states of the U.S. and Canada, we hold that administrative forms of reproductive violence against Latin American women are structurally connected to efforts in the U.S. and Canada to criminalize women of color and Indigenous women for their reproductive outcomes. The purpose of these systemically produced harms is to sustain cultures of gender-based violence in support of settler colonial configurations of power. (shrink)