feminist-nation building in Afghanistan: an examination of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

Women-led political organizations that employ feminist and nationalist ideologies and operate as separate from, rather than associated with, male-dominated or patriarchal nationalist groups are both significant and under-explored areas of gender, feminist, and nationalism studies. This article investigates the feminist and nationalist vision of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA exemplifies an effective political movement that intersects feminist and nationalist politics, where women are active, rather than symbolic, participants within the organization, and help to shape an ideological construction of the Afghan nation. RAWA subsequently links its struggle for women's rights (through feminism) with its nationalist goals for democracy and secularism. This article also analyses RAWA's use of conservative nationalist methods to reproduce the future of the organization and to develop ‘citizens’ for its idealized nation, while countering existing patriarchal social and familial structures through a re-configuration of women's roles in the family, community, and nation. This inquiry is based on geographic and feminist examinations of RAWA's organizational structure, literature, and political goals obtained through content analyses of RAWA's political literature and through interviews with RAWA members and supporters living as refugees in Pakistan in the summer of 2003 and winter of 2004/05. RAWA is an instructive example of counter-patriarchal and nationalist feminist politics that questions patriarchal definitions of the nation and its citizenry by reconfiguring gender norms and redefining gender relations in the family as a mirror of the nation.     

Promotion of Gender Equality at the Workplace: Gender Mainstreaming and Collective Bargaining in Italy

The article examines gender equality in collective bargaining and looks at the extent to which gender and equal opportunities issues have been mainstreamed in industrial relations systems in Italy where, despite the existence of old and new legislation on gender equality, there are persistently low levels of female employment and the precarious workforce is made up predominantly of women. The central question addressed in the article is whether the injection of a gender mainstreaming approach in the Italian collective bargaining system, combined with legislative measures, may improve the situation of women in the context of both public and private spheres. In particular, the article looks at whether gender mainstreaming has the potential to pave the way towards an ethos of substantive equality at the workplace, whereby women enter the workforce on equal terms and men are in a position to share the dual responsibilities of paid and unpaid work. The article maintains that gender mainstreaming may fulfil its transformative potential as a catalyst for changing both the conceptual and analytical tools which the law deploys, provided it is envisaged as a three-fold strategy involving simultaneous processes of deconstruction, replacement and inclusive measures, together with deliberative forms of democracy and the imposition of a statutory positive duty on public authorities to mainstream equality.

Shameful Separations and Embarrassing Proximities: Affective Constructions of Political (Il)Legitimacy in the Danish Debate on Prostitution

Political documents on gender equality in the Nordic countries contain interesting systematic variations in justification strategies and discursive commitments at different political-rhetorical levels. This is particularly apparent when political texts move from general gender equality to arguing about specific issues. This article looks at the variety of "versions" of gender equality that appear when the discourses of gender and the conceptualisations of power that inform Swedish political party documents are scrutinised. Consequences of different versions of gender equality for rhetoric about policy measures and rhetorical uses of "uniformity" versus "heterogeneity" are also discussed.     

States of Change: Reflections on Ireland in Several Uncertain Parts

The November 1994 crisis over the extradition to Northern Ireland of a paedophile priest was generally seen in Ireland as marking ‘a watershed in the political life of the state’. It provoked unprecedented public interest, raised fundamental questions about democracy and appeared to crystallize the long process of state-church realignment which has been taking place in Ireland for more than two decades. This paper reflects on the repercussions of the crisis, from a personal perspective, and especially with regard to changing gender relations in the Republic and the emergence of peace in Northern Ireland.     

Jordanian women in education: politics,pedagogy and gender discourses

The ‘epistemic’ violence that has beset gender discourses in education refutes the claim that progress is measured by figures and numbers of Jordanian women in schools and the workplace. While such discourses demand to be contextualized, deconstructed and resisted, they also necessitate creating a link between political praxis and gender politics. My argument centres on the indispensable role critical discourse can play in locating these instances of ‘epistemic’ violence and revealing the manner in which the themes of constructed gender knowledge have been subjugated to the political praxis of each context. Interventions by donors and NGOs have more often than not been emasculated by the political considerations of governments and establishments. The result has been ‘disciplined’ gender politics in education, perpetuating traditional discursive practices, roles and stereotypes instead of acting as an emancipatory power. Human development reports and traditional literature on gender bias in education have failed to account for such discursive/power practices. In this paper, I shed light on the national, the international and the textual ‘knowledge’ that surrounds gender bias in education in a context like Jordan. I conclude by demonstrating the importance of the national and its discursive practices in reformulating approaches based on the international (human development reports) and the textual (literature on gender bias and stereotypes in education).     

Italian Feminisms

The article focuses on the politics of representation in Kosova since the United Nations took over ‘peace management’ in 1999. It uses UN propaganda posters (political pedagogy) and local nationalist political advertising as a way to read the multiple gendered discourses of representation. It shows how gender is used relationally between competing forces – the ‘international community’ and nationalists – as a tool to ensure UN's imposition of Western policies and norms and as a mechanism for local politicians to consolidate their domination of the domestic/private sphere. Moreover, it discusses the price paid to mimic the West: how Kosovar politicians have sought to ‘undo’ national identity in favour of a Western self-representation through a gendered abnegation of Islam. Thus, as an intrinsic part of the discourse of ‘peace-building’, these images represent the site of power production, domination, negotiation, and rejection, involving the collaboration of different actors, institutions, and individuals. Three specific points will be made: first, the article seeks to show that a Western political modernization discourse has, paradoxically, reinforced patriarchal relations of power and traditional gender roles in Kosova through the subjugation of women. Second, it explains the inability to resolve competing Albanian narratives – one relying on the legacy of peaceful resistance and the other on the armed struggle against Serbian domination during the 1990s. Third, through the intermeshing of international peace-keepers and local nationalist patriarchs, it will show how the militarization of culture is perpetuated through, and in relationship to, gender.     

工作场所的民主何以可能:委内瑞拉实验的意义

工作场所民主是权利平等的内在要求,是政治权利平等向经济领域的延伸,而且有利于改进企业内部的关系,在社会主义国家,它是工人阶级政治地位的体现.要实现工作场所民主,需要克服政治权利如何能够延伸到工作场所等一系列障碍,但这些障碍并非无法克服的.工作场所民主能否实现,关键在国家政权的态度,而国家政权的态度往往取决于国家工人运动与政治民主的发展程度,同时,工人阶级的阶级意识与集体意识的发展状况也会对工作场所民主的实现产生重要影响.     

Gender,nation and party: an uneasy alliance for Welsh nationalism

This article draws upon new research exploring the relationship between gender and political nationalism in Wales. It is set within the changed political and institutional context of Wales, provided by the establishment in May 1999 of the National Assembly, the first democratic legislature in Wales for nearly 600 years. In studying leading women politicians from Plaid Cymru, it isolates potential tensions between gender and mainstream party political nationalism. It also begins to assess the specific influence of gender to contemporary Welsh nationalist politics. Its conclusions confirm the paradigm of a distinctive female experience of Welsh nationalism and point to a number of specific issues (scarce access to power resources and the myth of party unity) which distinguish women's experience of Welsh nationalism. The article concludes that an ‘uneasy alliance’ exists between gender, nation and party within Welsh nationalism, which is some way from resolution     

Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards: Depoliticizing Gender and the Economy

Gender quotas for corporate boards can be seen as a way of drawing attention to gendered power within the economy as well as a way to democratize the economy, yet the debate about them has focused on the economic and business benefits of gender equality rather than on gender justice or democracy. This article examines how women’s under-representation in economic decision-making was constituted as an economic problem in the European Union’s gender-equality policies and how the economization of the debate on gender quotas for corporate boards affects understandings of gender equality and the economy. The article contributes to research on gender and neoliberalism through developing an approach for analysing the depoliticizing effects of economized gender-equality discourses. It argues that the depoliticized understandings of gender and the economy put forward in the debate water down the politicizing potential of the proposed EU gender-balance directive and that the debate about gender quotas has enhanced the neoliberalization and corporatization of EU gender-equality discourse.     

Hard Heads and Soft Hearts

Abstract

Various Australian politicians have argued for the need to combine ‘hard heads and soft hearts’ in politics. Unfortunately, this article argues that that recognition is not yet fully accepted in Australian political science. While there has been a significant progress, both in terms of the number of senior women in the discipline and the gender content of Australian political science, problems still remain. Unfortunately, some of the issues are still those identified by Carole Pateman in her famous 1981 address as President of the Australian Political Studies Association when she noted both the underrepresentation of women in political science and that there was a tendency to define ‘the political’ in narrow ways that excluded the study of women and issues that were of concern to them. This article will explore why political science has been less open to incorporating feminist insights than some other related disciplines. It will analyse a number of issues regarding the gendering of Australian political science. These include narrow definitions of the ‘political’; a continuing implicit (gendered) prioritising of various fields and approaches as ‘hard’ political science and the denigration of other fields as ‘soft’; and the impact of neo-liberalism and the importance of the ‘political’ as a site for constructions of gender identity. It argues that the continuing resistance to ‘reinventing’ political science to take account of gender is particularly concerning given the potential impact on definitions of research ‘excellence’. The article also identifies some areas where more research needs to be done.     

“This is a Book about Choices”: Gender,Genre and (Auto)Biographical Prison Narratives

The article discusses equal rights to equal participation and public policies for gender balance in different societal arenas. Although gender balance is a central aim of official Norwegian gender equality politics, male hegemony is the dominant feature in most institutional settings of leadership, power and influence. This inconsistency is rhetorically handled through travel metaphors of gender equality and utility arguments about women's contributions to public life. Gender equality then becomes a question of time, and of how society would profit from “more” gender equality. The rights perspective is distorted. In the final part of the article, we discuss alternative, normative, approaches: gender balance in relation to parity in participation, a distributive norm of simple equality, and principles of non‐discrimination.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Feminist Review</Emphasis>: 25 years and beyond

The article explores the textual construction of gender categories in the political discourse of Simón Bolívar by means of a close critical reading of his seminal writings made public between 1812 and 1820. The historical and political processes known as Latin American independence constitute a moment of radical transformation. It was during this period that the questions of political rights, nationality and citizenship were most open to debate throughout the continent. The article shows how the category woman is constructed ambiguously in Independence/anti-colonial discourse, how gender is employed to create hierarchical systems of social organization to legitimate the exercise of power by an elite of white creole men and how myth is deployed in order to reinforce gender hegemonies. It will be shown that in Bolívar's writings colonial relations are recast as family relations and political independence from Spain legitimated in terms of sexual difference and masculine domination.     

试论国企厂务公开与思想政治教育

随着国有企业改革的深化 ,厂务公开所面临的思想政治教育者和受教育者的深层矛盾不断反映出来。解决好这些矛盾 ,一要正确处理实行厂务公开和开展思想政治教育工作的关系 ,具体要正确处理厂务公开与企业改革、发展、稳定的关系 ,与职工代表大会的关系和与调动企业经营者和劳动者两个积极性的关系。二要正确运用思想政治教育的原理 ,加深厂务公开的深度 ,拓展厂务公开的幅度 ,把握厂务公开的尺度。     

互联网 + 对中国企业民主管理实践的影响

当前,"互联网+"已经升级为中国国家战略,政府出台政策号召群团组织要拥抱互联网,中华全国总工会积极推动互联网与工会工作例如企业民主管理相融合,互联网正逐渐打破传统企业民主管理政治参与现状,职工由被动参与向主动参与转变,由部分参与向全部参与转变,互联网助推中国企业民主管理回归产业民主实质。     

Justifying Gender Equality on the Bench: WhyDifference Won't Do

The case for gender equality on the bench wouldseem too uncontroversial to requirejustification. Yet the practical realities ofthe slow progress of women towards equality ofparticipation both quantitative and qualitativein the judiciary testifies to the continuingneed to argue the case for change. To date, theprimary rationale for promoting gender equalityhas been that women will bring a uniquecontribution to the bench as a result of theirdifferent life experiences, values andattitudes. Such arguments derived fromdifference theory have had a strong appealsince they appear to give legitimacy to theundervalued attributes traditionally associatedas feminine while also promoting the meritprinciple by claiming to improve the quality ofjustice. However, this article argues thatdifference theory arguments are theoreticallyweak, empirically questionable andstrategically dangerous. Instead, it argues forthe adoption of a rationale for gender equalitybased on equity and legitimacy; that equalparticipation of men and women in the justicesystem is an inherent and essential feature ofa democracy without which the judiciary willlose public confidence. This approach, thoughless immediately appealing, is ultimately moresound.     

Letting Women in? Gender Mainstreaming in Regional Policies

Gender mainstreaming has over the last ten years become the dominant strategy of integrating gender issues in public policy. This article presents regional policy as a broad and increasingly important policy field to study, and analyses gender mainstreaming in this policy field in the Norwegian and the Swedish contexts. How do problem representations surrounding “gender equality” and “gender mainstreaming” produce meanings of gender as well as construct possibilities for change? The article shows that, despite some differences between the two countries, gender mainstreaming in regional policy can to a large extent be read as meaning “women”. Women are in this context given a narrow subject position and are constructed as lacking what it takes to produce sustainable regional growth. The concluding discussion highlights the relations between the implementation of gender mainstreaming and neo‐liberal political trends.     

Gender Justice or Gendered Justice? Female Defendants in International Criminal Tribunals

Recent scholarship has given increasing attention to studying women’s involvement in conflict and mass violence. However, there is comparatively less discussion of the experiences of women as actors and perpetrators in conflict, and limited discussion of women as defendants in international criminal tribunals. This article explores this under-researched area. By analysing legal materials from the cases of six female defendants, this article investigates the extent to which legal discourses are shaped by stereotypes regarding femininity, conflict and peace. It identifies three gender narratives—mothers, monsters and wives—used in relation to female defendants, which highlight the incompatibility of femininity with violence, and deny women’s agency in political and military contexts. Thus, this article concludes that female defendants in international criminal tribunals are viewed through gendered lenses, and discussed in accordance with gendered themes. This gendered justice is problematic, as it reinforces patriarchal gender stereotypes, and may hinder attempts to facilitate gender justice.     

A syndicalist moment? Democracy,insurgent unionism,and the ‘Outlaw Strike’ of 1920

This article considers World War I era labor insurgency through an examination of the 1920 ‘outlaw’ switchmen’s strike, one of the largest rank-and-file revolts of the postwar strike wave. Drawing upon Bureau of Investigation surveillance reports, the article argues the strike represented not so much an expression of a ‘syndicalist impulse’ as a struggle over the definition of the new unionism and the ideological legacy of the war. Inspired by the wartime rhetoric of Americanism and industrial democracy, pressed by the rising cost of living, and frustrated with the failure of the state and their parent unions to deliver living wages, the insurgents briefly succeeded in building democratic, cross-craft unions. The rebel unionists failed, but the ‘Outlaw Strike’ arguably was as important as the later and larger 1922 national shopmen’s strike in the way it highlighted issues of wages, union democracy, and employee representation.     

States of distinction: gender,Japan and the international political economy

This article looks at the question of how to understand the link between the changing position of women and gender relations and the changes in the global political economy. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the authors argue that states compete for respectability and distinction on the world stage, and that they deploy particular material articulations of gender and class relations as forms of symbolic capital for the nation. The authors demonstrate this using Japan as an example, tracing changes in the condition and representation of women between 1856 and 1945, as Japan's position in the global hierarchy of nations moved from a subordinated through a resisting to a colonising country. The authors suggest that women and gender relations are central to understanding international relations, and they propose a conceptual framework for analysing the significance of women and gender in the global political economy