Help for housewives: domestic service and the reconstruction of domesticity in Britain, 1940-50

This article argues that examining the debates over domestic science that took place in the late 1940s can produce insights into the ways in which gender, class and domesticity were inextricably linked and understood. The article focuses on three specific examples: a social survey of domestic service produced privately, a government report on the domestic organization of private households, and a radio debate broadcast by the BBC Home Service     

应重视科技期刊编辑语文水平的提高

科技论文要求在语言的使用上做到准确、简明、生动,应能完整地阐释文章中的思想。作为科技期刊的编辑,应当重视语文水平的提高,以适应本职工作的需要。     

Writing stri dharma: international feminism,nationalist politics,and women's press advocacy in late colonial India

This article contributes to recent historical debates regarding the shared connections between the colony and the metropole in British-ruled India through the examination of Stri Dharma, a widely known journal started in India in 1918 by British feminists. Neither completely British nor Indian in character, this women-run journal emerged during the 1920s and 1930s as an international feminist news medium targeted at Anglo-Indian, Indian, and British women readers. This broad-ranging audience participated in a complex political dialogue determined by both class and race tensions that created a sometimes uneven forum for the exchange of ideas. Through a close examination of this title and other primary source materials related to the context of women's suffrage and Indian nationalism, this article engages with contemporary feminist scholarship in order to trace the underlying cultural and political factors that motivated British and Indian women writers to create a periodical based on universalist principles of gender solidarity and international cooperation during the late colonial period.     

Evolution,Language and the Battle of the Sexes

This paper argues that the power of evolutionary psychology (EP) and the challenge it poses for feminists reside less in any new scientific knowledge EP has produced, and more in the meta-narrative it has provided for scientists whose work is not directly concerned with evolution. Using the study of sex/gender differences in language as a case study, the paper shows how EP's meta-narrative has been taken up in both expert and popular scientific discourse. It considers what gives the meta-narrative its appeal, and how feminists have contested it. It also locates the argument within the longer history of feminist responses to evolutionary science, comparing current debates with those that took place in the late nineteenth century.     

The Body as Situation: A Darwinian Reading of The Second Sex

Challenging the influential view that the chapter on biology in the first volume of The Second Sex is exposing scientific myths in severe prose, in the view of this paper, the chapter is as much about scientific facts as it is an intriguingly open-ended dialogue between phenomenology and science. Beauvoir’s consuming epistemological and scientific preoccupation with the category of biology is analysed in a bid to advance a new, naturalist–feminist conception of Beauvoir’s theory of natural history. The analysis unravels the theoretical edifice, with its tensions between Beauvoir’s selective but brilliant appropriation of recent discoveries in evolutionary biology and genetics and certain deliberate rejections and omissions of Darwinian evolutionary thinking. Contrary to Beauvoir’s intentions, she ends up conflating the term biology with, in particular, reproductive physiology, and perpetuating the ill-fated division between body and psyche. In contributing to a reformulation of an empirically grounded approach to the embodied mind and situated body, this paper debates some promising insights from contemporary neuroscience and primatology. These insights are critical to theory development, based on a non-anthropocentric stance and non-dualistic understanding of the mind–brain continuum and the body as a situation.     

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.     

Power and Rights in the Community: Paralegals as Leaders in Women’s Legal Empowerment in Tanzania

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.     

Thomas Malthus and maternal bodies politic: gender,race, and empire

Abstract

This essay explores the uneasy fit of representations of the Victorian monarchy and maternal metaphors of state with Malthusian doctrine and the debates over colonial initiatives and population pressures. Malthus's work on the principle of population authorized a potent mid-Victorian narrative which viewed the exalted body of the mother – and, by metaphoric homology, that of the state – as diseased, corrupt, and in imminent danger of putrefaction and decay. In Malthusian discourse, the colonies became the absolute sign of the pathology eating its way to the heart of the body politic. Malthusian discourse re-gendered the early nineteenth-century social body so that it became a silent, passive space upon which discursive expressions of the masculine could act. In the process, it also brought together troublesome conceptions of both race and gender to make a case for imperial progress and expansion     

Murder,cruelty and sexual assaults

As more and more political institutions stress the significance of gender equality policies, it becomes important to investigate the different interpretations and meanings attached to the concept of gender equality in diverse policy contexts. In this article we are interested in problematizing visions of gender equality by studying the challenges that the growing amount of paid domestic work performed within European households poses for gender equality policies and practices in two European countries. The aim is to reveal normative assumptions and silences in relation to gender equality by comparing how “paid domestic work” has been framed in policy debates in Sweden and Spain. As welfare states, Sweden and Spain are generally considered to be very different, and in policies on care for children and the elderly the differences are perhaps most apparent. In both countries, however, paid domestic work in the home has become more and more common in the last two decades. The rise of paid domestic services in European households has been interpreted as due to the limitations or decline of welfare states, the ageing populations, and the increasing numbers of dual-earner families. These services are most often provided by women, predominantly of immigrant background, and involve a wide range of tasks, including care work. The phenomenon of an increasing sector of domestic (care) work poses a theoretical and methodological challenge to gender and welfare studies. This article argues that the analysis of debates surrounding domestic service in private households is a useful starting-point for an intersectional analysis by means of revealing the normative assumptions and marginalization embedded in gender equality policies. It uses a comparative frame analysis in combination with intersectional analysis to assess how interactions between gender, class, race, and sexuality have been articulated in the policy debates on domestic services in Spain and Sweden.     

Visceral gendering and a politics of connectivity in science

This article contributes to tackling the limited impact of existing gender equality policies in science and their widespread dismissal in countries such as the Czech Republic by conceptualizing and addressing visceral gendering practices by which gender differences are produced and rendered (in)visible. Based on research at a Czech research institution and on theories of viscerality and the co-constitution of gender and science I examine practices that gender and de- and regender subjects and relations in ways that undermine gender equality in science. I then explore scientists’ feelings of belonging and contentment that draw attention to the significance of building and maintaining connectivity to knowledge objects, co-workers and lives. The conclusion outlines what a politics of connectivity would entail for research work and career trajectories that are more livable for a broad range of scientists.     

Adolescent Girls’ Experiences and Gender-Related Beliefs in Relation to Their Motivation in Math/Science and English

Although the gender gap has dramatically narrowed in recent decades, women remain underrepresented in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This study examined social and personal factors in relation to adolescent girls’ motivation in STEM (math/science) versus non-STEM (English) subjects. An ethnically diverse sample of 579 girls ages 13–18 years (M = 15) in the U.S. completed questionnaires measuring their academic achievement, ability beliefs, values, and experiences. Social and personal factors were hypothesized to predict motivation (expectancy-value) differently in math/science (M/S) and English. Social factors included perceived M/S and English support from parents and peers. Personal factors included facets of gender identity (felt conformity pressure, gender typicality, gender-role contentedness), gender-related attitudes, and exposure to feminism. In addition, grades, age, parents’ education, and ethnicity were controlled. Girls’ M/S motivation was positively associated with mother M/S support, peer M/S support, gender-egalitarian beliefs, and exposure to feminism; it was negatively related to peer English support. Girls’ English motivation was positively associated with peer English support as well as felt pressure from parents; it was negatively related to peer M/S support and felt peer pressure. The findings suggest that social and personal factors may influence girls’ motivation in domain-specific ways.     

Diversities of Class and Gender Experience and the Shaping of Labor Politics: Yorkshire's Manningham Mills Strike, 1890–91 and the Independent Labour Party

New evidence on gender and class reveals the diverse experiences of male and female workers in the worsted and in the rising silk plush industry in late nineteenth-century Bradford, Yorkshire and prompts a re-examination of the historiography surrounding the Manningham strike and labor politics. In the context of changing labor processes and the exclusionary policies of Yorkshire trade unionism, the striking velvet weavers in 1890–91 were developing their own political and organizational agenda based on gender cooperation and mutual support, similar to the trade unionism of Lancashire. This agenda was deflected by the rise of the Independent Labour Party and the onset of long-term industrial crisis in the West Riding.     

Minority women and the experiences of migration

This article addresses the theme of minority relations and the intensification of gender oppression. We adopt a comparative perspective to examine women’s experiences of migration in two diverse locations. The recent focus on difference in feminist writing renders problematic such comparative enterprises through the contemporary concern with questioning the universality of the category “woman.” However, we suggest that the concept has been deconstructed to the point that it raises the possibility that feminism becomes an inadequate theory and methodology for explaining the status of women. Through a comparative analysis of minority women in different social and cultural contexts, we explore this dilemma for feminism. We examine how gender relations reconfigure in reconstituted relations of class, race, and ethnicity and emphasize the necessity of recognizing both the dynamics of migrating feminisms and the centrality of gender in structuring power relations in diverse contexts.     

Women's work,artisanal discourse,and community: a response to Sheila Blackburn

This article is a comment on Sheila Blackburn's response to the author's original essay, ‘Gender Constructions and Gender Relations in Cotton and Chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain’, which appeared in Women's History Review (6[3], 1997). As the author repeats in this response, the apparently dominant artisanal discourse of the male chainmakers of nineteenth-century Walsall, supporting the exclusion of female labor from the trade, was undermined by conditions existing in Cradley Heath, where the community depended on that labor. Foregrounding this division regarding gender understandings, it is argued, provides a vantage point from which to gain a fuller and more accurate picture of the ways in which those understandings, as well as gender and community relations, were negotiated in one industry towards the end of the nineteenth century     

When a man debates a woman: Trump vs. Clinton in the first mixed gender presidential debates

Televised political debates have attracted intensive research interest. Here we examined the effect of mixed-gender televised political debates on the candidates’ multimodal gender communicative accountability structure. The 2016 election campaign in the United States introduced for the first time a new factor into the presidential political contest: gender. This study is grounded in a theoretical and analytical framework that maps gender accountability structures of verbal/nonverbal communication patterns. We analyzed the televised debates during the 2016 US presidential campaign with the candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The findings indicated that during mixed-gender debates, contenders present conduct that correspond to their gender communicative structures, primarily nonverbal patterns. Trump mainly expressed masculine-communicative patterns, while Clinton displayed mostly feminine-communicative patterns. The theoretical and analytical framework highlights the effect of gender on political communication. The novel perspective delineates and explains the implications of multimodal gender communicative accountability structure of contenders in mixed-gender political debates.     

Matilda sturge: ‘renaissance woman’ 1

Abstract

This article notes the virtual exclusion of women from accounts of the ‘Renaissance’ within late nineteenth-century British Quakerism. A focus upon a hitherto neglected figure, Matilda Sturge (1829-1903), author and Quaker minister, reveals her long-standing involvement in the aspects of Quakerism crucial to the Quaker Renaissance and as an active participant in the debates which preceded it. But Matilda Sturge also was active in the Home Mission movement, a project of Evangelical Friends, which has generally been represented as antithetical to the liberals of the Quaker Renaissance. Foregrounding women's experience introduces new perspectives on late nineteenth-century British Quakerism.     

Gender constructions and gender relations in cotton and chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain

Abstract

While scholars have emphasised the positioning of women as wives and mothers in working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England, their position in the workforce remained significant, even in such disparate industries as cotton and chain-making. In the former, while excluded from spinning, women's employment in powerloom weaving brought them into the heart of the production process, encouraging their participation in workplace struggles and ultimately influencing a transformation in the working-class family in terms of fertility control. In chain-making, while some male workers attempted to position women in the domestic sphere, others were dependent on their labour. Cultural constructions of gender were thus undermined, as the struggle for the minimum wage superseded attempts to remove women from the workforce. In neither industry was equality between men and women realised, while antagonism on the basis of gender persisted. Yet women's identification with their work remained evident while mutuality across gender lines was also apparent, as women themselves played an active role in the shaping of gender relations. Conceptions of gender, as they intersected with particular labour market structures, thus came under duress. Consequently, a more complex picture of gender in working-class life emerges than an analysis which privileges cultural constructions would allow.     

From Metaphor to Metamorph? On Science Fiction and the Ethics of Transformative Encounters

This article explores how the science-fictional figure of the metamorph can serve as a feminist figuration, a tool for rethinking structures for determining sameness and difference. The article offers close readings of selected metamorphs in contemporary science fiction and connects these imaginaries/imageries to recent feminist debates about representation, materiality, and agency. I suggest that contemporary metamorphs in visual science fiction open up space for a consideration of changeability and flexibility rather than fixity when issues of identity and ontology—of being in the world—are at stake. In light of the current political situation, where mass migration to Europe is foregrounding the fundamental differentiation between Self and Other, this article invites a discussion of the ethics at stake in the potentially transformative encounter between “us” and “them”, and the political potential of rethinking representation and signification through the figure of the metamorph.     

Sexual Ethics,Masculinity and Mutual Vulnerability

Over the past two decades, significant work has been undertaken in masculinities scholarship to aid the development of efforts to prevent incidences of sexual violence against women. This has included Carmody's powerful contribution of grounding primary prevention strategies in Foucault's ethics of the care of the self and others. This paper expands on this approach by theorising how Judith Butler's ethics of non-violence built on the recognition of vulnerability can provide a conceptual mechanism or justification by which men will embrace sexual ethics of care. Using the contextual example of group sexual assault by team sportsplayers as well as recent efforts to address masculine violence in Australia, the paper argues that Butler's recent work contributes to ways in which that ethics can be better embraced by men as part of a broader project of cultural transformation of (hyper-)masculinity into a less-harmful event. The paper addresses ways in which to understand the failure of team sportsplayers capacity to recognise the vulnerability of women in group sexual assault cases by showing how the operation of normative frames prevent conceiving the hypermasculine self as anything but inviolable. In that context, some recent debates in Australian masculinities and anti-violence scholarship on whether or not changes to gender relations are best communicated as a benefit or loss of power to men are addressed. The aim of this paper is to make a small contribution to advancing theories and concepts of sexual ethics in the context of masculine sexual violence by investigating ways in which Butler's approach can operate as both a mechanism for inducing care of selves and others and an outcome of the cultural transformation of gender relations.