Researching difference and diversity within women's movements: Sisterhood and after

This paper illustrates how Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project has approached difference and diversity within the history of women's movements. I argue that the terms ‘difference and diversity’ cannot do justice to histories of black women unless they are used to highlight the impact of race on black women's experiences in women's movements. Furthermore given the widespread acknowledgment that there was tension in the British women's liberation movement over the marginalization, exclusion and racism faced by black and Asian women, the project sought to ensure that black and Asian women's varied experiences as campaigners were explored and we also asked our white interviewees about race. I show how the in-depth nature of the life history interview method holds the possibility for greater reflection on these vital and often unsettling issues in feminism's history.     

Refugee women in Serbia – invisible victims of war in the former Yugoslavia

In this paper, I explore the experiences of women who found refuge in Serbia during the war in the former Yugoslavia. I look at the women's experiences of both leaving home and coping with everyday life in refuge. The exploration of refugee women's experiences is mainly based on analyses of their own stories, which I collected while researching women and war. In spite of all the hardship of their lives, refugee women who fled to Serbia have been treated by Western media, the public and aid organizations as ‘UNPEOPLE’ or as non-existent. Making their experiences visible as women, refugees and citizens is the main purpose of this article.     

Informing Red Power and Transforming the Second Wave: Native American women and the struggle against coerced sterilization in the 1970s

It is argued that despite formidable foes—including powerful feminist organizations and Native American rights groups—Indigenous women's activism had an important influence on the larger movement for the termination of sterilization abuse in 1970s USA. Their work highlighted coerced sterilization as a most agonizing example of compromised tribal sovereignty—and demanded that political leaders address it. The article describes the tangible achievements of these women in effecting federal regulations as well as their influence on mainstream American feminist ideology and Indian Country's interpretation of women's rights as sovereign ones.     

An Exceptional Choice?

Building on Penelope Deutscher's analysis of the biopolitical implications of abortion being regulated by a framework of exceptionalism, this article explores discursive constructions of abortion as an exceptional choice that is only justifiable in ‘worthy’ cases. In so doing, it extends our understanding of exceptionalism and neo-liberalism as ways for thinking about abortion. Through an analysis of interviews with New Zealand women about their views on abortion, I contend that exceptionalism operates not only as a dominant framework for talking about abortion but that it structures a hierarchy of worthiness in abortion discourse. I argue that the exceptionalism framework both obscures the ways that abortion is an ordinary and common part of many women's reproductive experiences and raises questions for how challenges to prevailing legislative regimes might be organised.     

The value of narrative in understanding Mongolian and Australian women's journeys of survival recovery and remaking of self,through and beyond domestic violence

In this article I argue that a narrative method and analysis may work across cultures to aid in the understanding of women's experiences of survival, recovery and remaking of self following domestic violence. This article draws on a cross-cultural narrative analysis of eleven Mongolian and eleven Australian women's stories of survival, recovery and remaking of self following domestic/intimate partner violence. The very diversity of the Mongolian and Australian women offers a case for the value of narrative method. The focus of the article is the rationale for and explanation of feminist, qualitative, cross-cultural and narrative research methods which underpinned the study. Interspersed throughout the discussion are illustrative excerpts from the women's stories which support the argument that there are some deep similarities between the experiences of Mongolian and Australian women.     

Escaping Assimilation's Grasp: Aboriginal women in the Australian women's military services

During the assimilation era of the 1930s–60s, most Australian Indigenous women living in proximity to white Australia were forced to work as domestic servants with few other education or employment prospects. One significant yet under-studied exception was employment in the armed services' women's auxiliaries. As a consequence of such employment, Aboriginal ex-servicewomen learned new skills and new opportunities to improve their social statuses. Through analysis of oral histories from four Aboriginal ex-servicewomen who served in the 1940s–60s, this article examines how work in the women's forces empowered Aboriginal women and represented an escape from assimilation policies.     

the <Emphasis Type="Italic">conditions</Emphasis> of politics: low-caste women's political agency in contemporary north Indian society

In this article I analyse the structural and cultural conditions of low-caste women's political agency in urban north India. Whereas in Western feminist political theory, the sexual division of labour is considered to be a key constraint for women's political participation, I show how this has a secondary relevance in the context analysed. I argue that issues concerning the division of labour are intertwined with and subject to those of male consent and support for women's activities. I illustrate how it is often the supposedly ‘oppressive’ household boundaries rather than alternative outer spaces that, under a series of enabling circumstances, initiate women's political activities. Against this backdrop, I show how Indian women activists’ political agency is shaped by men's role, and how agency's relational nature is embedded in women's lifecycles, everyday practices and cultural expectations; in essence, in overall gendered agency. Comparative analyses between Western and non-Western models of political participation and discourse have only just begun. In this respect, I contribute to this nascent field in the following directions: not only do the arguments I present in this article challenge the individualistic Western subject of political action, but they also complicate the idea of the resulting empowerment as a culturally constructed process whose understanding arises from the dialectics between insider and outsider values.     

Performance Anxieties

Drawing on the narratives of 23 un(der)employed trans women residing in Ontario, British Columbia, Canada and Washington State in the USA, this article explores the connections between affect, gender and labour in post-Fordist society. Post-Fordism is characterised in part by the putting to work of immaterial labour. Workers' whole personalities are harnessed to produce value for capital through evoking feelings of satisfaction, security and contentment amongst consumers. While women's employment rates have increased dramatically within post-Fordism, I argue that trans women's experiences of marginalisation within and expulsion from the workplace points to the narrow parameters of femininity deemed capable of producing such positive feelings. Trans women's visible, audible and behavioural cues of gender alterity lend insight into criteria that position some women employable and others disposable.     

Gender troubles,Redux

Thirty years ago, women's history written from a feminist standpoint was the revolutionary force, challenging androcentric thought and definitions of experience. Today, gender has become the more threatening moniker to those who would maintain patriarchal power and suppress knowledge. While not new, recent attacks on ‘gender ideology’ by conservative, often labeled right-wing governments, threaten the continuation of degree programs, as in Hungary, and pose manifold dangers to scholars world-wide. In the context of women's and LGBTQ movements, twenty-first century globalization, and political and economic changes, those who cling to the gender binary simplify the subject of women's history.     

Rural women migrant returnees in contemporary China

This essay focuses on the experiences of female returnees in rural–urban migration in contemporary China. Based on in-depth interviews with women migrants, returnees, their family members, friends and fellow villagers in both sending and receiving areas, the research examines rural migrant women's return migration process. It investigates rural migrant women's decision-making in the process, the ways women returnees construct their lives in the countryside, their identity negotiation as returnees and the impact of patriarchy on women's experiences of the return and resettlement process. The author argues that despite women's active involvement in migration and the ‘empowerment and agency’ gained through migration, the patriarchal power relations within rural households remain intact and continue to shape rural female returnees' life in their villages.     

Giving Afghan Women a Voice: women's writing in Afghanistan

This article considers how far women's rights have improved in Afghanistan since the intervention by the international community in 2001. It examines this question through the author's experience of working with an Afghan women's writing group. It looks at the tension between allowing Afghan women to voice their experiences, and the danger of their writing embracing depictions of the female as ‘victim’. It concludes that while depictions of Afghan womanhood may appear to promote ‘negative’ images, the women themselves offer positive role models.     

questioning global vaginahood: reflections from adapting <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Vagina Monologues</Emphasis> in Hong Kong

Drawing on the author's experience in devising a localized version of The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong, this paper critically appraises the ‘global vaginahood’ in the globalization of The Vagina Monologues and the V-Day movement that reproduces a core-periphery relationship in the transnational women's movement. As a theatrical performance and a worldwide movement, these productions are remarkable for the manner in which they raise awareness about women's sexuality and violence against women in different parts of the world. Critical questions, however, remain on the rhetoric of universalism and the ethnocentric methods of the global campaign, with US women's experiences and agenda defining those of women in other parts of the world. As a worldwide campaign, the V-Day movement reproduces a hierarchical model between the global North and South, with an emphasis on Western leadership rather than coalition between partners with different experiences, priorities, and strategies. The paper argues that feminists may develop more effective coalitions with local women by recognizing and identifying locally derived creative efforts to respond to issues that are pertinent to their lives. As such, the paper is a push for dialogues in the V-Day campaign and transnational women's movement in general.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Zina</Emphasis> and the moral regulation of Pakistani women

From 1998 to 1999, I interviewed women who had been incarcerated under the Zina Ordinance (zina means illicit sex) in Pakistan. This led me to an examination of women's moral regulation by their families, a process in which I maintain the state is complicit. I argue against relativist explanations of this process, which view Pakistani culture or notions of timeless Islam as the reason for women's incarceration. Instead, I examine the interconnection of morality with the legal/judicial structures, the relationship between the state and patriarchy within families, and the plight of impoverished women in Pakistan within an era of globalization. In my analysis, I link economic development and human rights to globalization and the continuing costs of militarization. Such connections allow feminists to target the structural conditions that sustain the laws in Pakistan and help create an environment that will bring about the repeal of the laws while contributing to trans-national feminist solidarity.     

the home,the veil and the world: reading Ismat Chughtai towards a ‘progressive’ history of the Indian women's movement

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

Women's Voices in Swedish Towns and Cities at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: municipal franchise,polling, eligibility and strategies for universal suffrage

This article examines women's polling and eligibility in the municipal elections in Swedish cities and towns in the decades round the 1900 turn of the century. The aim is to present the patterns of suffrage, voting behaviours and representation that emerge from statistics produced by the women's movement and to discuss how these relate to the women's movement's strategies for women's political citizenship and national suffrage. The results are furthermore analysed in comparison with eighteenth-century conditions, when legally competent women who paid taxes could vote in some elections.     

Gender,body, and feminine performance: Edna St.Vincent Millay's impact on Anne Sexton

This paper will discuss Edna Millay's influence on Anne Sexton, with particular reference to issues such as gender politics, femininity, performativity, and the female body. Through close comparative readings of some of the two women's most representative poems, I analyze, firstly, how Millay's outspokenness and daring self-presentation as a woman writer facilitated Sexton's handling of material that was previously considered unacceptable for poetry and, secondly, how Sexton expanded the scope of women's writing in a manner that paid tribute to the earlier poet's innovation. My paper maintains that Millay's repeated attempts to explore gender and interrogate the concept of ‘authentic’ femininity anticipated Sexton's overtly feminist works. Ultimately, I am arguing that, despite the literary climate of the 1960s (which urged the rejection of poets like Millay) and despite her own ambiguous feelings for the earlier poet, Sexton eventually recovered Millay as an important literary predecessor for her generation, consistently imitated her artistic posturing, performance strategies, and self-presentation, and finally acknowledged her unique contribution to women's writing.     

Feminism,peace, and civil liberties: Women's role in the origins of the World War I civil liberties movement

Historians of the women's movement in the World War I era tend, understandably, to concentrate on the final heroic chapter of the suffrage campaign. Since the majority of suffragists followed their leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, into the war effort after April 6, 1917, suffragist‐feminist patriotism is a dominant theme. Recently historians have begun to chronicle women's pre‐war and wartime peace work, particularly through the aegis of the Woman's Peace Party, founded in early 1915.¹ Women's civil liberties activism during the war and in the Red Scare aftermath is still uncharted terrain. There is, to date, little appreciation of the way the World War I era experience in the United States influenced a small but determined and articulate number of left‐wing feminists to become civil‐libertarian activists. In this article I examine women's involvement in several important civil liberties organizations and argue that the convictions and activities of women not only helped to shape the agenda of the burgeoning civil liberties movement but also to influence federal public policy, particularly with respect to treatment of conscientious objectors, political prisoners, and “enemy aliens.” I also suggest that some feminists involved in both antiwar and civil liberties work during the war era came to see how militarism, war, and misogyny are related in western society, an insight which informed the thought and activities of the post‐war women's peace movement.     

Feminism,imperialism and race: a dialogue between India and Britain

Abstract

During the partition period and up to 1918, Polish women's interests and aspirations outside the family were in increasingly frequent cases directed to taking up paid work and resorting to other measures in order to sustain their family. In other cases women's activity was shaped by experiences of resistance to national and sometimes also religious discrimination. In the early twentieth century only small groups of women put forward demands for equality, and even if they did so, they usually thought that this would be possible only after the rebirth of an independent foolish state. It is to this supreme aim that they subordinated their interest and their struggle for equality.     

Women's Organizations and Movements in the Commonwealth Caribbean: The Response to Global Economic Crisis in the 1980s

In this paper I explore the emergence of women's organizations and feminist consciousness in the twentieth century in the English-speaking (Commonwealth) Caribbean. The global ideas concerning women's equality from the 1960s onwards clearly informed the initiatives taken by both women and states of the Caribbean. None the less, the paper illustrates, by use of examples, the interlocked nature of women's struggles with the economic, social and political issues which preoccupy the region's population. I examine in greater detail two case studies of women's activism and mobilization around the impact of structural adjustment policies in the two territories of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. By tracing the connections between and among the organizations and initiatives of women in the region, the paper situates the feminist movement in the English-speaking Caribbean as a continuously evolving one, fusing episodic struggles in different territories, engaging women of different classes and groups, and continuously building on past experience.