Relating feminisms,nationalisms and imperialisms: Ireland,India and Margaret Cousins's sexual politics

Abstract

From 1907 to 1913 Margaret Cousins was one of the most prominent leaders of the Irish Women's Franchise League, the most militant of the various Irish suffragist groups. A Theosophist, Cousins left Ireland in 1913 for Theosophical headquarters in Madras, spurred by her commitment to “the cause of womanhood the world over”. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Cousins played a central role in certain forms of Indian feminist and cultural nationalist movements. This article attempts to sketch some of the ways in which Cousins's class and imperial situation provoked and limited her feminist ideology.     

Bridging cross-cultural feminisms: annie besant and women's rights in England and India, 1874-1933

Abstract

Annie Besant was a Victorian radical whose outspoken views included advocacy of women's rights and opposition to British imperial policies. In her mid-forties she went to live in India. Contesting British attempts to Westernize Indian society, Besant found herself in the seemingly anomalous position of defending traditional Indian patriarchy and resisting efforts to reform the status of Indian women. Such conservatism brought on Besant criticism not only from Western liberals and Christian missionaries, but also from many Indian social reformers. When she gradually shifted her views and voiced her support for Indian women's rights, Indian nationalists condemned her as a British imperialist. The conflict between loyalty to national heritage and opposition to traditional patriarchy is one that colonized women have commonly experienced. By examining how an anti-imperialist British feminist responded to the question of women's reform in India, this paper offers another perspective on the complexities of this dilemma.     

exploring symbolic violence in the everyday: misrecognition,condescension, consent and complicity

In this paper, we draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘misrecognition’, ‘condescension’ and ‘consent and complicity’ to demonstrate how domination and violence are reproduced in everyday interactions, social practices, institutional processes and dispositions. Importantly, this constitutes symbolic violence, which removes the victim’s agency and voice. Indeed, we argue that as symbolic violence is impervious, insidious and invisible, it also simultaneously legitimises and sustains other forms of violence as well. Understanding symbolic violence together with traditional discourses of violence is important because it provides a richer insight into the ‘workings’ of violence, and provides new ways of conceptualising violence across a number of social fields and new strategies for intervention. Symbolic violence is a valuable tool for understanding contentious debates on the disclosure of violence, women leaving or staying in abusive relationships or returning to their abusers. While we focus only on violence against women, we recognise that the gendered nature of violence produces its own sets of vulnerabilities against men and marginalised groups, such as LGBT. The paper draws on empirical research conducted in Sweden in 2003. Sweden is an interesting case study because despite its progressive gender equality policies, there has been no marked decrease in violence towards women by men.     

Family law,family law politics and family politics

The analysis of state institutions where the state is geared towards the patriarchal family shows that it aims—in the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, at least—at abandoning women to a civic freedom where they lack protection and real rights. Women are ‘emancipated’ in the true sense of the word by the liberalisation of divorce laws, which is accompanied by drastically reducing maintenance claims of divorced women.This development which—at first glance—seems to be in men's interests only, at the same time assists in the development of conditions where women, historically placed in the position of object, can gain the position of subject and lead a fight for equal changes in a society that guarantees to them (though only on paper) legal equality. These conditions will make women fight to gain effective equality.Every effort is made through family politics and the application of patriarchal family ideology to force women to retire rather than fight. However, all these legal and ideological efforts will finally be in vain, because a family ideology that pretends protection and security, while the law systematically cuts down this protection, cannot be sufficiently strong to fool the female half of the population.     

we say what we are and we do what we say: feminisms in educational practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

From four countries (Canada, England, New Zealand and the United States of America) and five disciplines (Counselling & Guidance, Adult Education, Early Years Education, Indigenous Education and Human Development), five feminists in academia come together to share how feminism affects their practice. Ranging in reflections on teaching, research, service and scholarship, this article describes a cooperative enquiry into feminism in action in Aotearoa, New Zealand.