This paper will highlight Maathai’s insights regarding empowerment, tracing several important themes in her approach, namely, empowerment’s relationship to self esteem, teamwork, and political action, its ambivalent relationship to formal education, and the role of cultural traditions in providing alternatives to colonial-era cultural impositions and current exploitative effects of neo-liberal capitalism. After reviewing Maathai’s thoughts on each of these topics, I will briefly draw upon other East African thinkers and Africanists’ studies of East African communities to present corroborating (...) evidence for Maathai’s views or for challenges to her position. Listening to the perspectives of Maathai and other East Africans provides several important correctives to current popular uses of the term “empowerment.”. (shrink)

Khader offers a deliberative perfectionist approach to identifying and responding to adaptive preferences-- deprived people's preferences that perpetuate their deprivation.

Women’s empowerment is often an important goal of development interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana and the pathways through which small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers contributes to women’s empowerment. Using qualitative data collected with 144 farmers and traders through 28 individual interviews and 16 focus group discussions, this paper innovates a framework to integrate the linkages between small-scale irrigation and three dimensions of (...) women’s empowerment: resources, agency, and achievements. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. This shows that many women face serious constraints to participating in and benefitting from small-scale irrigation, including difficulties accessing land and water and gender norms that limit women’s ability to control farm assets. Despite these constraints, many women do benefit from participating in irrigated farming activities leading to an increase in their agency and well-being achievements. For some women, these benefits are indirect—these women allocate their time to more preferred activities when the household gains access to modern irrigation technology. The result is a new approach to understanding women’s empowerment in relation to irrigation technology. (shrink)

Recent discoveries that immigrant women often evaluate their experience more positively than men do have led to speculation that women view their public- and domestic-sphere status and power as having increased as a result of postimmigration employment outside of the home. This study, based on in-depth interviews with 25 Salvadoran women who migrated to Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s, challenges a unilinear, integrationist view that sees immigrant women's status and roles as changing along a traditional-modern continuum. Immigrant women's (...) experiences and their perceptions of their experiences are quite diverse and complex. For many, paid employment outside of the home is not a new experience, and the household gender division of labor did not significantly change after migrating to the United States. However, women did report a sense of empowerment, newfound freedom, and selfconfidence as they negotiated traditional gender roles in a new social and cultural context. (shrink)

This paper brings together the concepts of social norms and innovation diffusion to assess two community development projects with gender targets. The projects failed to meet their objectives although they embodied leading global ?good practices? for community-based participatory approaches. In order to succeed, the projects needed to reach and empower poor women; however, they were located in contexts with significant gender inequalities and weak governance in one case, and with political conflict in the other. In such contexts, participatory projects with (...) gender objectives likely require more strategic and longer term interventions than current community development models are allowing. (shrink)

Monogamy in Western countries has recently undergone criticisms, because it is perceived as an oppressive institution, adjacent to reactionary cultural values. In this article, I argue that monogamy is in fact a force of social progress and women’s empowerment. I point out that, given our natural tendencies, the most likely alternative to monogamy is polygyny. By its very nature, polygyny faces a numerical difficulty, to the extent that (given the equitable male to female ratio) when one man engages (...) in romantic or sexual relationships with multiple female partners, inequality and social conflict ensues. I present historical and sociological data that sustains the argument that polygyny is associated with greater inequality, violence, poverty and women’s vulnerability. Nevertheless, while monogamy can be considered a force of social progress, I argue that the State is not morally entitled to prosecute non-monogamous lifestyles, but there may still be non-coercive ways to promote monogamy. (shrink)

Book review of Serene Khader's "Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment".

Many caricaturists get the idea for their caricature from current issues of society. The philosophy of the caricature lies in the opinion it presents, which discusses society’s goals, culture, and crises, and it is represented in an ironic way to deliver its visual message. The fight for women’s rights, inequality, and discrimination are examples of issues concerning Saudi women that have been represented by several caricaturists. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate female and male caricaturists’ linguistic (...) and semiotic representation of Saudi women’s challenging issues. Following (Kress and Van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn. London: Routledge), a social semiotic multimodal approach to the analysis is adopted in this study, which is drawn from Halliday’s social semiotic theory. Twenty caricatures were carefully selected based on the content and the issues that are being discussed in the caricatures with a consideration of their relation to the aim of the study. The present study contributes to enriching Saudi women’s rights in relation to Saudi Vision 2030. The research is significant in that, in examining women/male caricaturists’ representations of the challenges and opportunities of Saudi women empowerment prior/after Saudi Vision 2030 in the workplace, social life, it contributes to understanding the supportive caricature discourse, basic social values for Saudi women, the pressures they undergo, and the success they have achieved so far in attaining their rights. The study findings show that both the semiotic and verbal elements of the caricatures were significant in delivering the messages for women’s rights in the new Saudi. (shrink)

There is a strong impetus in international agricultural development to close ‘gender gaps’ in agricultural productivity. The goal of empowering women is often framed as the solution to closing these gaps, stimulating the proliferation of new indicators and instruments for the targeting, measurement, and tracking of programmatic goals in research for agricultural development. Despite these advances, current measurements and indices remain too simplified in terms of unit and scope of analysis, as well as being fundamentally flawed in how they aim (...) to capture the relevance of ‘gender’ in diverse local contexts. We propose that the impulse to apply exogenously defined and weakly validated ‘women’s empowerment’ measures to diverse local contexts risks prioritizing practical expedience over scientific accuracy and societal relevance. Furthermore, the application of such measures risks creating the impression that programmatic “gender targets” are being achieved, while simultaneously undermining substantive gender transformative goals. The authors conclude that a different methodological approach grounded in participatory and qualitative methods is needed to create more meaningful metrics for assessing progress towards women’s empowerment. (shrink)

Western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women’s entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women’s religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. This study employs a combination of uniquely rich and diverse data to examine women’s formal religious authority in a predominantly Christian setting in Mozambique. I first use (...) survey data to test hypotheses regarding the prevalence and patterns of women’s formal leadership across different denominational groups. I then support and extend the quantitative results with insights on pathways and consequences of women’s ascent to formal congregation authority drawn from qualitative data. The analysis illustrates how women’s religious authority both defies and reasserts the gendered constraints of the religious marketplace and the broader gender ideology in this developing context. (shrink)

Certification programs seek to promote decent work in global agriculture, yet little is known about their gender standards and implications for female workers, who are often the most disadvantaged. This study outlines the gender standard domains of major agricultural certifications, showing how some programs (Fair Trade USA, Rainforest) prioritize addressing gender equality in employment and others (Fairtrade International, UTZ) incorporate wider gender rights. To illuminate the implications of gender standards in practice, I analyze Fairtrade certification and worker experience on certified (...) flower plantations in Ecuador, drawing on a qualitative and quantitative field research study. (1) I show how Fairtrade seeks to bolster the wellbeing of female workers, addressing their workplace needs via equal employment, treatment, and remuneration standards and their reproductive needs via maternity leave and childcare services. My research demonstrates that for female workers, addressing family responsibilities is critical, since they shape women’s ability to take paid jobs, their employment needs, and their overall wellbeing. (2) I show how Fairtrade seeks to bolster the rights of women workers through individual and collective capacity building standards. My findings reveal how promoting women’s individual empowerment serves as a precondition for collective empowerment, and how targeting traditional labor rights is insufficient for empowering female workers, since their strategic choices are curtailed largely outside the workplace. While Fairtrade certification bolsters the wellbeing and rights of female workers in and beyond the workplace, much still needs to be done before women can claim their rights as workers and citizens. (shrink)

Fair trade is a new form of commercial partnership whereby actors in the North engage with actors in the South on a number of conditions, including setting a minimum price, a development bonus, and so on. But above all, fair trade organizations in the South are implementing mechanisms that more or less facilitate the empowerment of their members. This article analyzes the empowerment effects of two fair trade organizations in South India. It shows that while positive effects can (...) be seen, the prevailing social norms in India are extremely influential for women at the moment, so that women are putting all their hopes on their daughters through their education. (shrink)

This article addresses the complex reflections regarding gender relations expressed by women active in the contemporary Islamic revival movements in Europe (especially France and Germany). Much recent research conducted among these groups aims to counter the rather negative accounts prevailing in public discourses on gender and Islam. This literature notably argues that women's conscious turn to Islam is not necessarily a reaffirmation of male domination, but that it constitutes a possibility for agency and empowerment. However, when faced with certain (...) ‘traditionalist’ positions defended by these women, even this well-meaning literature seems precarious, left in a state of uncertainty. Taking this puzzlement as a point of departure, this contribution aims to think about the dilemmas involved in articulating a language for women's dignity and self-realization, which competes with dominant languages of equality, individual rights and autonomy. This project is rendered even more intricate by the fact that these pious Muslim women socialized in Europe have also been partly fashioned by the liberal discourses against which they want to position themselves. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the marginalisation and abjection of strongwilled and assertive women in Dagaaba settings in rural north-western Ghana. This is done by paying attention to a local identity category known as pog gandao—‘a woman who is more than a man’. The pog gandao, or what I gloss as the wilful woman, concept is used by men and women locally to stigmatise hard-working and assertive Dagaaba women. Drawing inspiration from the reappropriation and redeployment of queer abjection for the (...) subversion of homophobia and the violence of compulsory heterosexuality, I demonstrate how such naming or shaming into the position of a pog gandao serves to hamper initiatives by enterprising and talented Dagaaba women. Being labelled as pog gandao, it appears, is even to lose one’s status in normative gender presentation as a woman; it means to transcend into a realm beyond the masculine. But this transcendence is not enviable due to its potential to expose the subject in question to perceived supernatural harm, a serious matter in this cultural context whereby the world of human affairs is understood as thoroughly saturated with supernatural forces that structure daily and ritual comportment. I argue that the shaming interpellation of pog gandao works as the most powerful weapon against wilful women in oppressive male-centric institutions of the Dagaaba. And yet, this stigmatised interpellation also has great emancipating potential, and I conclude by exploring ways to reclaim it for undermining female subordination, and for both empowering women and for feminist politics. (shrink)

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

In September 2013, images of bruised, bleeding and battered Hindu goddesses went viral on social media networks. Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge), Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) and Durga (the goddess of strength and power) appear as victims of domestic abuse in the Abused Goddesses advertising campaign against domestic violence. In this article, I analyse the Abused Goddesses campaign and the conversations it generated. I argue that it reiterates both a form of Hindu nationalistic discourse as well as longstanding patriarchal, (...) orientalist and neocolonialist perspectives about sexual violence in India. I examine the discourse generated by the Abused Goddesses campaign on social and mainstream media in order to trace how these images were circulated, perceived and engaged with by Indian and international audiences. While the campaign went viral on social media, I argue that its virality offers insufficient conditions for substantial social change around gender violence, including consciousness raising. Through analysis of the campaign and the ways in which it has been commented on, I demonstrate how the representation of domestic violence through the calendar art imagery of abused goddesses ultimately reaffirms classist, casteist, racist, sexist and orientalist discourses about Indian women and the violence they face. (shrink)

Erin Murphy-Graham draws on more than a decade of qualitative research to examine the experiences of Juanita and eighteen other women who participated in the SAT program.

The turn to optimism makes figures of progress, consumption, self-making and empowerment appear in various genres of chick-lit. These narratives, however, are often still shaped by a depressive tone that is distinct from one that says that women have more options than happy-ever-after, even while heterosexual romance remains a structuring force. This article takes the Ghanaian web-series An African City as its example to explore this ambivalence. An African City offered its first season in 2014 and was immediately received (...) as ‘Africa’s own Sex and the City’, praised for challenging the image of a backward Africa, while criticised for offering an unrealistic account of life for urban African women. The series is set around the lives of five women, one of whom plays the leading role as narrator. The ‘African city’ serves as another character, rather than a mere backdrop for the action to unfold. I argue that the various characters perform an ongoing ambivalence towards progress, always stuck in a look backward. It is not simply that the quest for romance fails as part of the drama, but that the drama of failure itself folds onto both the African city and African women as figures that remain eternally stuck in their relation to the temporalities that accrue around modernity. (shrink)

"Golf day 2005 @ federal golf club, red hill." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (196), pp. 7.

The motivation of the study is to gauge the effects of access to finance, technical know-how, and financial literacy on women’s empowerment through establishing women’s entrepreneurial development. A sample of 950 women-owned SMEs was considered, and structured questionnaires were sent from getting target responses. After careful assessment through the data cleansing procedure, it was found that only 795 responses are suitable for further investigation, implying the sample response rate for the study is 74.71%. The study implemented structural (...) equation modeling and multivariate regression analysis for gauging the causal association that is direct and indirect effects of target variables. According to findings, a positive statistically significant linkage was revealed with women’s entrepreneurship sustainability and women empowerment. Furthermore, the mediating effects were also established for women’s empowerment. According to the study findings, it is suggested that for women entrepreneurship sustainability, effective policies surrounding financing accessibility, technical knowledge expansion, and financial understating have to be promulgated in the economy, which allows bringing women empowerment at large. (shrink)

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

Studies of local knowledge and farmer participatory research tend to focus on raising crops and livestock. Little attention is given to processing and marketing farm products, an important source of income for rural households, particularly women.This article presents the case of an investigation into processing and marketing of milk products by agropastoral Fulani women, which revealed how the women under stand local market forces and recognize important social and even local political functions of their marketing activities. However, it also revealed (...) the limits of their knowledge about how the local economy interlinks with national and international economies.Reasons are examined why the study did not lead to local technical and institutional development in dairying. Differentiation is made between two types of research: “extractive” research to provide information for development planners and academics; and participatory or “enriching” research, in which data collection, analysis, and reporting are done with rural people, to use in their own problem-solving. It is argued that “enriching” research should be aimed at increasing rural people's present knowledge, so that they can better understand and cope with external influences on their activities. They could then better defend their own interests against the macroplanning State.Finally, the ethics of documenting the research results are questioned. Documentation of conventional research is primarily for empowerment and enrichment of the extractive economic and academic systems. But there is also a danger that wider dissemination of results of participatory research and local knowledge will not benefit the rural participants but rather strengthen the information base of planners, so that they can better manipulate local economies. (shrink)

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes (...) in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations. This article argues that paralegals can be effective actors in women’s legal empowerment where they are able to work as leaders, negotiating power relations and resisting the forms of violence that women encounter as obstacles to justice. Paralegals’ authority will be realised when their role is situated within community leadership structures, confirming their authority while preserving their independence. (shrink)

This article problematizes claims of women’s empowerment in “masculine” sports through an exploration of women’s participation in mixed martial arts —a combat sport colloquially referred to as “cage fighting.” MMA, perhaps more than any other sport, allows women athletes to challenge patriarchal beliefs about gender by demonstrating women’s capacity for physical violence and domination. But whereas investigations into MMA have produced important findings for studies of men and masculinities, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to (...) women’s participation in this hypermasculine world. This article begins to fill this gap through an ethnographic account of this growing sport. Drawing from more than four years of ethnographic fieldwork and 40 semi-structured interviews with professional women’s MMA athletes, I show how the neoliberal–postfeminist culture of MMA undermines its empowerment potential by shaping gendered subjecthood in ways that are conducive to the maintenance of gender inequality. I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings for women’s empowerment in sport. (shrink)

This paper examines how gender and identity function in the personal memoirs of female Holocaust survivors. The memoirs of Nanda Herbermann and Sara Tuvel Bernstein, two survivors of Ravensbrück, the Nazis' concentration camp for women, are explored as case studies of how feminine gender identity influenced female inmates' experiences and recollections of life in Nazi concentration camps. The different backgrounds of these women, as a German Catholic and a Jew, respectively, also affected their lives as inmates, and influenced how they (...) constructed their personal narratives and identities through memoirs. Thus, gender and other aspects of personal identity intertwined both during their time in Ravensbrück and in their writings of their experiences. Their memoirs, moreover, serve as means of personal empowerment as they rewrote themselves into history on their own terms. These memoirs, therefore, enhance our understanding of the gendered and the personal dimensions of the Nazi concentration camp systems and the Holocaust. (shrink)

The Malabo Declaration places the transformation of agriculture and food systems at the centre of regional and national policy priorities across Africa. Transformative change in the way that food is produced, processed and consumed is seen as not only necessary for addressing the complex challenges of food security and poverty alleviation, but also as a driver of new employment opportunities and economic development. As pointed out within the recent UN Food Systems Summit, essential elements of food system transformations include digital (...) transitions and the empowerment of women and youth. However, there are few empirical examples demonstrating how these agendas come together to affect food system change. Here we focus on an enterprising group of young farmers referred to as Malawi’s new achikumbe elite, who are urban based, educated and engaging in agriculture on a commercial basis. The aim is to characterise this emergent group of agriculturalists and to understand the role that they have within the transformation of Malawi-s agricultural sector. We explore how digital platforms are supporting the emergence of this new category of farmer and positioning young people as agents of change in food systems transformation. Based on interviews and ethnographic research with 32 young farmers between 2018 and 2022 combined with interviews with representatives of service providers and agricultural organisations, we argue that this group is characterised by a higher level of education, self-dependency and use of digital platforms, enabling them to adapt their context to sourcing production resources and engaging in commercial agriculture. We present evidence that digital platforms are supporting the new achikumbe elite (NAE) to engage flexibly with new commercial markets, contracts and access a wider range of training and advice. However, while digital platforms can offer more equitable access to information and market opportunities, they also represent potential avenues for food system transformations that are inequitable. As such, we argue that there is need for digital technologies to mitigate against potential inequalities. (shrink)

Struggles for gender justice by women's movements have sought to give legal recognition to gender equality at both national and international levels. However, such society-wide goals may have little resonance in the lives of individual men and women in contexts where a culture of individual rights is weak or missing and the stress is on the moral economy of kinship and community. While empowerment captures the myriad ways in which intended and unintended changes can enhance the ability of individual (...) women to exercise greater control over their own lives, it does not necessarily lead to their engagement in collective struggles for gender justice. This paper argues that ideas about citizenship, as both legal status and potential for action, can help bridge this gulf between institutional and individual change. It draws on empirical research from Afghanistan and Bangladesh to explore the extent to which efforts to empower women by development organisations have also encompassed discourses of citizenship which allow them to articulate, and act on, their vision for a just society. (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 origins of marginalization in nursing and the health sector in Ghana can be traced to colonialism and how a colonial era laid a solid foundation for inequities and entrenched disparities, as well as the subsequent normalization of marginalizing acts, in the health sector, particularly for women. Drawing upon varied literature over a 60‐year period and perspectives from feminist theory, this paper considers the lasting impact of Ghanaian women's historical position during the colonial era and within the patriarchal system that (...) ensued. Through this process, it becomes possible to shed light on the crucial role that colonialism has played in women's experiences, perspectives, and health‐seeking behaviors, and the manner in which it has created a healthcare sector that marginalizes women's health. Although women possess valuable knowledge which should be an asset to consider when providing healthcare services, marginalization of that knowledge has become normalized across society and the healthcare system. There is an urgent need to disrupt and challenge this normalization, and to advocate empowerment and recognition of women's valuable knowledge and experiences, providing women a voice in health decision‐making discourses and in the research processes by which we understand and develop healthcare. Through this, healthcare in Ghana could become more empowering, inclusive, and responsive to the unique experiences and needs of Ghanaian women. By understanding something of the historical origins of women's health marginalization within colonialism, nurses can begin to appreciate women's knowledge and integrate it into healthcare strategies that are more gender‐sensitive and equitable. (shrink)

This article compares the social movement mobilization that led to reforms in police and judicial handling of battering in the United States to the movement ideology, organization, and tactics that resulted in analogous policy reform in the processing of dowry burnings and beatings in India. Using field notes and secondary sources from both countries, the article examines how both movements redefined violence against women in families as a public issue, then looks at how movement demands affected policy reform in each (...) country. The analysis questions the current conceptualization of social movement success. Social movements theory assumes that entry into the polity of liberal, democratic states constitutes success in the sense of social change. Yet the cases analyzed suggest that assumptions about the gender neutrality of state response to movements prevents researchers from critically examining the outcomes of social movement mobilization. Moreover, institutionalization of women's movement demands and organization may diminish the capacity of such movements to control the social construction of domestic violence against women by providing protection without empowerment. (shrink)

Concerns have been raised in Africa to address women’s construction health and safety needs adequately. These concerns include less participation of women in the sector, low income and less benefits being given to women, lack of adequate protective construction clothing suited for women, unfavourable employment conditions for women, and lack of construction site security and other facilities for women. This research article provides an overview of the suggested solutions to address the concerns raised. In addition, practical interventions being implemented (...) by the Durban University of Technology and Makerere University research collaboration project team to address women’s needs in construction health and safety through women empowerment and involvement in construction research, education and practice in Africa are outlined. The main approaches applied in this research study are as follows: use of relevant publications on women’s construction health and safety needs in Africa and analysis of data obtained from reliable construction professional bodies in South Africa and Uganda to demonstrate gender imbalances.Contribution: The main contribution of this study was to emphasise the significance of including and involving women in construction research, education and practice as a major solution to address women’s health and safety needs in Africa in the future as women are in a much better position to understand their own needs than men. (shrink)

Development literature on global gender empowerment devotes much attention to employment, a code word for the inclusion of women’s labor in the global market. Recent work in transnational feminisms shows that the emphasis on employment over assets may not prevent exploitation of labor and perpetuity of poverty. This paper first highlights research on how women are increasingly taking on too much responsibility, working in a confluence of survival-oriented activities that undermine their own well-being. I also address how women (...) are increasingly able to get out of poverty: when they can labor in such a way that they are not merely working to survive but also working for accumulation of their own material assets, foremost of which is basic housing. Finally, I consider these transnational feminist insights about the importance of housing for women in light of philosophical concerns about property ownership, specifically Locke’s theory of property. In justifying property rights through labor, and arguing against the state’s right to usurp property, a Lockean can give a defense against forced evictions that still occur in some contexts and give support for a normative connection between women’s labor and assets. (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)

Egg freezing can allow women to preserve their eggs to avoid age-related infertility. The UK's recent extension of elective egg freezing storage has been welcomed as a way of enhancing the reproductive choices of young women who wish to delay having children. In this paper, I explore the issue of enhancing women’s reproductive choices, questioning whether there is a more significant aspect overlooked in egg freezing. While increasing storage limits expands reproductive choices for some women, focus on this extension (...) alone, I argue, misses a fundamental issue with egg preservation that often remains ignored; the importance of effective information on egg freezing and the effect this has on women’s reproductive choices. Ultimately, I highlight the crucial role of balanced information in enhancing women’s choices regarding egg freezing and argue that focusing on extending and increasing provision may obscure this real opportunity to empower women and their authentic reproductive choices. (shrink)

This article takes up Smart’s suggestion to examine the way the law works in practice. It explores the context of current criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences in Queensland, Australia. This article argues that legal method is applied outside the higher courts or “judge-oriented” practice and that the obstacles inherent to legal method can be identified in the practices of police, lower court staff, magistrates and lawyers. This article suggests that it may be difficult to deconstruct legal method, even by (...) focussing on law in practice, and as a result it may be difficult to successfully challenge law’s truth claims in this way. The analysis of criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences reported here supports Smart’s earlier findings that women and children who seek redress through the criminal justice process find the process at best ambivalent and at worst, destructive. However, the article also shows how, in the Queensland context, women sometimes find their way to feminism and personal empowerment by going to law. (shrink)

In this article, we explore smart deterrents and their historical precedents marketed to women and girls for the purpose of preventing harassment, sexual abuse and violence. Rape deterrents, as we define them, encompass customs, architectures, fashions, surveillant infrastructures, apps and devices conceived to manage and protect the body. Online searches reveal an array of technologies, and we engage with their prevention narratives and cultural construction discourses of the gendered body. Our critical analysis places recent rape deterrents in conversation with earlier (...) technologies to untangle the persistent logics. These are articulated with reference to the ways that proto-digital technologies have been imported into the realm of ubiquitous computing and networks. Our conceptual framework offers novel pathways for discussing feminine bodies and their messy navigation of everyday life that include both threats to corporeal safety and collective imaginings of empowerment. (shrink)