International Journal for Intersectional Feminist Studies: Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collection

https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/11650

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 46

Open Access
To Veil Or Not To Veil: Examining the Dynamics of Race and Sexuality within the French Hijab Ban
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2021) Jeannot, Gaïa
In April of 2021, the French Senate chose to introduce added expansive legislation relating to the visibility of religious dress in public spaces to bolster the country’s secular commitments. Though the existence of religious symbols in public spaces remains a matter of controversy, France’s legislative body has over the past two-decades introduced a string of legislation which has a disproportionate effect of Muslim women and girls. Namely, the current proposed bill would ban the use of hijabs in public spaces for girls under the age of 18, and this severely restrictive decision has gathered both national and international condemnation within feminist circles as a perverse attempt at policing women’s bodies. Therefore, this paper hopes to contribute to the rich field of intersectional feminist writing, drawing on the work of black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw, and provide added consideration of religion and sexuality. More specifically, in addressing the unique positionality of Muslim women this paper identifies the interacting dynamics of gendered orientalism and women’s sexual agency in Western neo-liberal states promotes further marginalisation and victimisation
Open Access
Feminism-Intersectional Feminism/Gender and Queer Theory: A Review on the Identity- Women in The Color Purple and Rudali
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2021) Roy, Suparna
Stevie Jackson and Jackie Jones in their article- Contemporary Feminist Theory said that Jackson says “The concepts of gender and sexuality as a highly ambiguous term, as a point of reference”. Sexual orientation is an intricately planned, socially developed and questionably interrelated gadget utilized not in violation of our spending plan of Women's liberation that considers "sex" as an employable term to conjecture its deconstructive social viewpoints. Helene Cixous notes in Laugh of Medusa that people enter the emblematic request contrastingly and the subject position open to either sex is unique. This difference of entrance points of the marked and un-marked bodies results in variation of rights! Within the corpus of Human Rights, the considerable printed rules include all those entitlements which permits any ‘human being’ to sustain and appreciate the self as an acceptable and floatable being not as an ‘othered and subjugated’ life! The idea, of being recognized and categorized within the binarized construction of either inferior or superior in relation to caste and gender, is somewhat normalized under the framework of birth of the body in and within a specific standard of the ‘brahminical structure of Indian society’. Marginalization has numerous branches of oppression, out of which I prefer discussing how from Feminism the journey top Intersectional Feminism including Gender theory has enriched our comprehension and percepts to visualize the numerous and multiple oppressions taking place. I will therefore discuss selective literary works to showcase the multiple marginalizations of Women.
Open Access
Working women and Mental Health: A social commentary
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2021) Ramavat, Suman
This article provides my personal opinion on women’s challenges juggling their responsibilities between paid workforce and household responsibilities. It is based on my observation at my workplace and social circle. Neolieralisation has resulted in increased participation of women in the paid workforce around the world. This has resulted in significant social and economic benefits for women personally as well as for the economy (International Growth Centre, 2021). However, owing to these benefits we often do not pay attention to the negative effects of this on women’s lives, for example, bad mental health because of increased work pressure and household responsibilities.
Open Access
A Transdisciplinary Perspective of Reaffirming Matristic Societies
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2021) Ransom, Katharine I.
In this article, I pull from historical discussions of matristic societies, Marxist feminist discussions of the matriarchy, the work of Marija Gimbutas, and the work of Göettner-Abendroth and Modern Matriarchal Studies to form connections to transnational and decolonial feminism. For the most part, matristic societies function outside of patriarchy and capitalism. Although the social structure and power women attain varies within each society, it would be unfair to label all matristic societies as patriarchal ones with lineage running through the female line. Individuals have more freedom of choice than in many patriarchal societies.
Open Access
Challenges Facing Teaching and Learning of Gender Education in Nigerian Universities
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2021) Ahmed, Idris; Jacob, Ogunode Niyi
Open Access
Editorial Board Report
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2021) Kohli, Ambika
One another crazy year has just passed. It has been quite a tough time for a lot of us all around the world. We wish things to get normal as soon as they can get. We are really glad to see our contributors submitting their work even during these hard times. This issue features articles from all around the world. Wish everyone a happy reading and a happy new year. Thanks Editorial Board Team
Open Access
Son-preference and family planning: Women Using Reproductive Technologies and Spiritual Healers in Urban Middle-Class India
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2021) Kohli, Ambika
Both son-preference and small family size are important elements of contemporary urban middle-class Indian families. The prevalence of small families of one or two children with a strong desire to have a son has pushed women to resort to illegal means of ultrasound sex-detection, use services from spiritual healers, and follow ancient Indian knowledge. I have used the concept of technologies to explain the use of modern reproductive technologies and the application of ancient spiritual knowledge in women’s lives. In addition, I have employed the concepts of multiple modernities that suggests the use of technology to meet contemporary reproductive needs is quite modern in itself. It is a qualitative study of urban middle-class married mothers in the states of Delhi and Haryana, India, view and practice son preference. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 45 urban married, educated, middle-class mothers recruited through the snowballing technique. This article suggests that technology and society are mutually constitutive interests technology can be seen as both shaped by social-cultural settings and shaping social structures.
Open Access
Writing Feminism: The Razzmatazz of Western Feminist Thought
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2020) Vyas, Rakhi
Feminism has been an on-going battle of late and considering the condition of women in contemporary times too, it can be safely concluded that the feminist movement shall flow unabated. Women have been undauntedly making stupendous efforts, intellectually, culturally, sociologically and politically, to make their concerns heard but the quintessential emancipation from the patriarchal, chauvinistic yoke is yet to be realized. With the passage of time, women have succeeded in carving a niche for themselves in the male-dominated set up, but oppression and injustice towards them is still rampant in different walks of life. The present paper is an endeavour to have an overview of the feminist ideological germination as it began and flowered in Europe and America so as to gain insight into the western feminist movement that created a theoretical (and subsequent actual) prototype of female liberation for the world to look up to, to evaluate, understand and follow.
Open Access
Sexuality, Health and Hygiene in Colonial India (1860-1930)
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2020) Megha, Mridul
The paper has focused upon understanding the politics of health during the British Raj in the light of venereal diseases. It is an attempt to analyze the role venereal diseases came to play in the regulation of sexuality of the Indian natives (particularly those that did not fall within the Victorian norms of respectability). The introduction of biomedicine in the colonies was an administrative necessity and a part of a larger project of cultural hegemony. The attempt has been to highlight hegemonic concern far beyond the concern of the public health of the ‘natives’; the relationship of knowledge, power and sexuality (as surveillance). The feminine body in particular came to be analyzed as being thoroughly saturated with sexuality. Review of literature suggests women’s sexuality, eugenics and racism were predominant themes in the discussions of both the colonialists and the nationalists. The women’s body in India during the colonial rule became the focus of debates. However, the issue of women’s health was never brought up. I will attempt to discuss the plight of native Indian women, particularly, the prostitutes whose sexuality first came to be controlled and then go on to looking at the challenges posed by alternate sexualities. The research involves an examination of GOI Home-Public files and Annual Lock Hospital Reports (North-Western Provinces and Oudh) along with an examination of the existing historical literature available on women’s health in colonial India from 1860 to 1930. There has been a deliberate omission and an invisibility of alternate sexualities in the archival sources (for it disturbed the image of colonial heterosexual masculinity). In the absence of official records, the attempt has been to look beyond archival sources; and use unofficial cultures of sexuality, i.e., the fictions of the British Raj as well as ‘footpath’ magazines (Nar Naree, Hum Dono). These themes were common in journals of sex-education as well as ‘advice’ and ‘discussion’ publications.
Open Access
International Journal for Intersectional Feminist Studies, Volume 6, Issue 1-2, December 2020, ISSN 2463-2945 An Investigation into the Challenges Preventing Girls Child From Going to Universal Basic Education in Gwagwalada Area Council of F.C.T, Abuja, Nigeria
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2020) Jacob, Ogunode Niyi
The study investigated the challenges preventing girl child from going to Universal Basic Education (UBE) in Gwagwalada area council of Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria. Research survey design was used for the study. The population of the study comprised all the teachers in the selected ten basic schools sampled for the study. Two hundred teacher made up of (120 male and 80 females) was used for the study. Simply sampling technique was first used to select the basic schools and teachers for the study. Two research questions were developed for the study. Questionnaire was employed for data collection. The questionnaire was titled “investigate the challenges preventing girl child from going to Universal Basic Education questionnaire”. The questionnaire had two sections. Section A and Section B. Section was meant for collection of bio-data information while section B collected information on the research topic. The research instrument was corrected by two lecturers in the faculty of education. The content validity of the instrument was determined by experts in Educational Planning and Test and Measurement who matched all the with the research questions to ascertain whether or not the instrument actually measured the intended content. Two hundred questionnaires were sent out to the respondents and the two hundred was collected through a research assistant engaged for the job. Simply percentage was used to analyze the data collected in the study.
Open Access
Message from the editorial board
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2020) Kohli, Ambika
We are so glad to see our journal turning 6-year-old this year. However, the year has been challenging for the whole world, COVID-19 being at the forefront. Many people lost their lives across the world because of the novel pandemic. Pandemic has not only raised health issues and have exposed our vulnerable health systems, but have also raised several social and economic challenges. Gender issues emerged during lockdown affecting women’s lives cannot be undermined. Women’s lives got severely affected by lockdown such as increased burdens of domestic care towards their families, increased domestic violence cases, difficulty in accessing support services, lost income, and lost opportunity for education are some of the challenges faced by them. We hope to get everything normal as soon as possible. Happy reading, everyone!
Open Access
Unveiling the veil: Critical study of the two Poems "Purdah I &II" of Imtiaz Dharker
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2020) Kumar, Ajay
Before the 1950s, the concern of Indian Poetry in English by women was completely different. They generally dealt with the common issues of human relations. Apart from Toru Dutt, no early woman writer in English from India has glorified Indian women or addressed their problems in her poetry. The post-independent Indian women poets are entangled within a broad spectrum of feminist concern that has led them to move far ahead of their predecessors. Imtiaz Dharker has emerged as one of the significant women poets who have challenged the conventions of patriarchy vehemently as part of their strategies to grab the male space. Born and brought up abroad, she was confident enough to oppose her community's orthodox nature in unequivocal terms. Her two poems, "Purdah I" and "Purdah II" are invariably treated as her poetic manifestoes of rebellion against conservative and patriarchal Muslim society. The title of the poem "Purdah" is very significant, literally. It denotes veil or cover but carries a deeper connotation; in fact, Purdah is a typical patriarchal machination that confines the women within the false sense of security and propriety. By using Purdah as a metaphor, Dharker posits how the social and cultural constructs of certain conventions are deliberately used as instruments of regimentation to gratify the self-interest of a specific section of society. Dharker raises the emblem of revolt against the conventional Islamic culture, which through its traditions and customs, attempts to subjugate and subordinate women at each and every phase of life.
Open Access
From the Editorial Board
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2019) Editorial Board, International Journal for Intersectional Feminist Studies
Gender is such a fascinating and complex topic to write on that our authors’ work, even after five years, does not stop amazing us. This volume comprises five contributions focusing on gender issues in different parts of the world, such as Europe, India, Nigeria and China. Dixita Deka’s work discusses her experiences as a researcher while researching on extrajudicial killings in the North East state of Assam in India. Pamela Basante in her article, talks about the perception of hijab in European society and to have a better understanding of Muslim women’s lives. In the next article, Ransom discusses the lack of economic data among the matrilineal societies. She has analysed a few articles on this topic and provides her insights and analysis by enriching the literature. Aloy et al., in the following article, touch on the controversial topic of men facing domestic violence in Nigeria. Their work enriches the wider debate of patriarchy and gender violence and myths associated around it. The last contribution is by Ambika Kohli. She has provided a brief note on the newly published book ‘Gender and Education: Essays from Economic and Political Weekly’. We invite contributions for next year’s issue. Please email your work at ambikkohli@hotmail.com The Editorial Board Team
Open Access
Beyond the Veil: Media prejudice towards the use of the hijab in Europe
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2019) Basante, Pamela Nuñez
Using the perception of the hijab in European society, I intend to highlight the role of the media in the construction of stereotypes toward Muslim women in Europe, in the hope of opening a discussion of the topic. By examining Islamic feminism as a lens with which to view the oppression of women in Europe, the reader’s implicit tendency toward an ethnocentric interpretation will hopefully begin to diminish and a clearer picture of the potential entry points for empowerment begin to take shape. The goal of this article is to remove barriers of western feminist ideologies in the effort to better understand the lives of Muslim women in Europe
Open Access
Between footnotes, rumours, and field notes, locating memories of extra-judicial killings from North East India
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2019) Deka, Dixita
This paper attempts at initiating a conversation on an under-represented event of extrajudicial executions popularly called ‘secret killings’ in the North East Indian state of Assam. Ever since India’s independence in 1947, the North East region of India has witnessed the beginning of armed struggles towards self-determination and sub-nationalism. Unlike and until the late 1990s, today the region is comparatively ‘peaceful’ if peace would equate to the official death statistics. However, an ambivalent meaning of peace unfolds in the region’s oral narratives coming from the people who have experienced, witnessed, perpetrated, recall or overlooked violence that had left them without closure. In this paper, I intend to reach out to the under-represented voices irrespective of their sex but with a keen reflection upon the difficulties of locating women and representing their testimonies of violence. I have attempted to do this gravitating towards the footnotes, rumours, and field notes. These vignettes and memories contest the homogeneity of women as a category and necessitate making the narrative on secret killings inclusive
Open Access
A note: Gender and Education book
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2019) Kohli, Ambika
Gender and Education: Essays from Economic and Political Weekly (2019) is a book recently published by Orient Black Swan publishers. This book is a collection of different essays, focusing on education and women in India, originally published in Economic and Political Weekly from 2000-2017.
Open Access
The Lack of Available Economic Data When Researching Matrilineal Societies
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2019) Ransom, Katharine I
There is limited economic and statistical data on matrilineal societies, for reasons that are addressed in the conclusion. However, there are four key articles, “Do Women Supply More Public Goods than Men? Preliminary Experimental Evidence from Matrilineal and Patriarchal Societies” by Anderson, et al. (2008), “Gender, Competitiveness, and Socialization at a Young Age: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society” by Anderson et al. (2013), “Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes: Field Experiments on The Matrilineal Mosuo and The Patriarchal Yi” by Gong, et al. (2012), and “Gender Differences in The Dictator Experiment: Evidence from The Matrilineal Mosuo And the Patriarchal Yi” by Gong, et al. (2015), that discuss economic aspects of the matrilineal Khasi in India and the Mosuo in China. These articles, and their limitations are explored from a critical feminist perspective to provide additional insights and analyses. Then, the author details the issues with conducting a large-scale data collection on matrilineal societies, and how these issues they might be mitigated
Open Access
Domestic Violence Victimisation in Nigeria: The Often Ignored Perspective
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2019) Ojilere, Aloy; Nkwoh, Jorge; Obiaraeri, Nnamdi
Domestic violence is a bidirectional global human factor. It is actually gender-neutral, albeit in Nigeria and beyond, women are erroneously considered by most as “the victims” of domestic violence, and men as “the perpetrators”. Using the doctrinal methodology, this paper explores the often ignored fact that men are also the victims of domestic violence perpetrated by women. It argues that even in a patriarchal society like Nigeria where women are considered as the “weaker sex” and men, “the head”, men still suffer domestic violence perpetrated by women. It offers possible patterns and reasons for domestic violence against men, and why violated men are usually silent, ignored or unbelieved. Lastly, it makes suggestions for tackling the menace. The paper is an alternative insight to the often ignored perspective of domestic violence, especially in Nigeria. There is no known primary data on this subject, hence, this paper rests basically on secondary data.
Open Access
Co-dependency: A Disease of Inequality?
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2018) Al-Mushtaq, Sabah
This article is an attempt to review various approaches towards co-dependency including pathologising characteristics associated with women as a social entity. A critique from feminist perspective, role of unequal distribution of power and resources is discussed alongside the power strategies of control exercised in intimate heterosexual relationships. As co-dependency has been observed to promote an identity based on powerlessness and co-dependency model increases separation from the family of origin rather than association, an empowerment approach to support the clients is discussed with implications for the future practice.
Open Access
Gayle Kimball. Brave: Young Women’s Global Revolution (in two volumes, Vol. 1: Global Themes & Vol. 2: Regional Activism). [Equality Press], 2017. With introduction, b/w photographs and notes. x, 373 pp & xiv, 643 pp.
(Project Monma Research Centre, 2018) Brynnan, Morgan
Finally, we hear the authentic voices of girls and young women from around the globe, from the traditional to the radical. Encompassing interviews and fieldwork from 88 countries, sociologist Gayle Kimball brings together over a decade of original research on female youth. Such research is sorely lacking, as most other works of this kind are regional and/or discuss youth without including their voices. Kimball goes beyond standardized internet surveys of middle-class youth, with in-depth video interviews available on the companion blog, https://globalyouthbook.wordpress.com, of young women from the favelas of Brazil to the upper-class in Saudi Arabia. Some of the interviews and contacts went on for over a decade as the young women moved into adulthood, and Kimball traveled for much of the research. A monumental piece of research and analysis from Feminist Standpoint Theory, Kimball includes and compares other notable surveys of youth and women’s issues in the two volumes. Don’t expect to hear only feminist voices---traditional young women speak clearly in these pages as well. A good history of feminism and what it means today to young women is part of the essential reading in Brave. Both volumes discuss the impact of neo-liberal policies, war, non-violent resistance, and upheavals.