“It’s Another Way Of Making A Really Big Fuss” Human Rights And Women’s Activism In The United Kingdom: An Interview With Tania Pouwhare

Following the “Encountering Human Rights” conference in January 2007, Emily Grabham interviewed Tania Pouwhare, a women’s rights activist working at the Women’s Resource Centre in London. Their discussion engaged with the professionalisation of activism, funding constraints and New Labour policies and their impact on immigrant women. Against a background of financial insecurity and huge demand for their services, many women’s organisations in the United Kingdom struggle to use human rights law to advance women’s rights. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of human rights remains powerful within women’s activism, and law remains relevant as a potential form of ‘direct action’ and “another way of making a really big fuss”.     

The Female Body and Reviews of Women Pianists in 1950s London

Women pianists in London in the 1950s, performing mainstream repertoire (Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and Chopin) as well as modern pieces which demanded stamina, physicality and bravura, were often the subject of negative reviews. The critics’ attitudes towards them seems to echo the prevailing Freudian mantra, ‘anatomy is destiny’: women, generally smaller than men, apparently possessing less power and mental capacity, were deemed unfit for this repertoire. But if some women pianists demonstrated ‘unusual’ (for women) physical and mental power, successfully performing long and difficult pieces, they too were damned by the critics, because they did not fit the traditional notion of femininity. In this article, the author demonstrates the magnitude of the effect of the cultural image of women on the reception of both the ‘feminine’ and ‘unfeminine’ women pianists in 1950s London.     

Citizens of their World: Australian Feminism and Indigenous Rights in the International Context, 1920s and 1930s

Inter-war Australia saw the emergence of a feminist campaign for indigenous rights. Led by women activists who were members of various key Australian women's organizations affiliated with the British Commonwealth League, this campaign proposed a revitalized White Australia as a progressive force towards improving ‘world’ race relations. Drawing upon League of Nations conventions and the increasing role for the Dominions within the British Commonwealth, these women claimed to speak on behalf of Australian Aborigines in asserting their right to reparation as a usurped people and the need to overhaul government policy. Opposing inter-war policies of biological assimilation, they argued for a humane national Aboriginal policy including citizenship and rights in the person. Where white men had failed in their duty towards indigenous peoples, world women might bring about a new era of civilized relations between the races.     

企业女职工维权工作刍议

女职工特殊利益与合法权益维护存在现实问题,搞好女工维权工作,企业工会和女工组织责无旁贷。一方面要完善维护机制,另一方面女职工要不断提高自身素质,增强维权意识,以确保维权工作的落实。     

A “Quick and Dirty” Approach to Women’s Emancipation and Human Rights?<Superscript>1</Superscript>

During the past decade, women’s and human rights ‘language’ has moved from the margins to the ‘mainstream’ of international law and politics. In this paper, the author argues that while feminists and human rights activists criticise the ‘mainstream’s interpretation of women’s and human rights, ‘we’ do not question what becoming part of the mainstream and the cosmopolitan classes has meant for us. Drawing on examples of how women’s and human rights arguments have been used in the post-conflict state-building process in Afghanistan, the author attempts to show how international women’s rights and human rights advocacy campaigns planned by well-meaning humanitarians in Western capitals can backfire when implemented in politically complex environments. Dr. Sari Kouvo is a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is also affiliated with the Center for Global Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg. Dr. Kouvo has several years experience of working with human rights and gender issues in Afghanistan. The opinions expressed in this article are her own and do not represent opinions of the organisations she has worked for or is working with.     

The FEPC and the legacy of the labor-based Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s

The Labor Movement and the Civil Rights Movement are often seen as two distinct movements for social justice. During the Second World War, however, this was not the case, as many activists and leaders argued that civil rights advances would enhance the egalitarian premise of the Labor Movement and as increased opportunities in employment seemed the best way to advance civil rights. These two movements came together to fight for the perpetuation of the wartime Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), which had been initially spurred on by the great labor leader A. Philip Randolph. During and after the war, when Northern business interests and Southern segregationists threatened the existence of the FEPC, the cause for civil rights and economic justice led to the formation of a dynamic coalition of civil rights liberals, including advocates from religious, labor, civic and civil rights organizations. This article explores the contentious relationships within the coalition and how the fight for a permanent federal FEPC led to the creation of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which became a crucial voice during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and which is today the largest umbrella organization fighting for the cause of civil rights.     

高校女教师劳动权的法律保障研究

我国现在已经建立了以宪法、劳动法和妇女权益保障法为核心的比较完整的对妇女劳动权进行保护法律法规体系,但对高校女教师这一社会群体来说,还是存在着女教师与男教师不同龄退休、职业性别隔离、男女劳动待遇不平等等侵害劳动权的行为。产生这些问题,既有意识上的原因,也有立法不完善、执法不力等原因。可以从加大男女劳动权利平等内容和意识的宣传和教育、完善相关的立法,以及加强执法等方面来保障高校女教师的劳动权。     

Feminism,Art, Deleuze,and Darwin: An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz

Abstract

This discussion stresses that looking at countries on the margins of European colonial rule can be useful when considering the wider dynamics of the present, reflecting the persistence of colonial discourses and how racism “endures”. Iceland’s colonial experience was characterized by duality, in which the country was an object of colonialism, while actively participating in the racist discourses predominant in Europe at that time. This paper demonstrates how Iceland’s long association with the exotic and its gendered manifestations is currently being perpetuated by the tourist and state industries, under the influence of neo-liberal ideas about nation branding. When contextualized within the larger geopolitical environment, Iceland as an “exotic” destination unravels the racist and colonized narratives still at play within a wider geopolitical context.     

Trusting in Trust(s): TheFamily Home and Human Rights

In July 2002, the U.K. Law Commission published its Discussion Paper No.287 on home-sharing. The conclusion drawn by the Law Commission was that it would not be possible to devise a statutory scheme for the resolution of family property disputes which is both workable and flexible enough to deal with the wide range of personal relationships that exist. It further took the view that, with appropriate changes to the way in which trusts principles are currently interpreted and applied by the courts, these trusts principles are sufficiently flexible and coherent to deal with the question of ascertaining and quantifying property rights over the family home. The aim of this paper is to examine the implications of these particular conclusions drawn by the Law Commission for both the law of trusts and the resolution of family property disputes between cohabitants. In particular, the paper will consider the extent to which trusts law remains a workable and desirable option and whether any mileage may be gained by drawing on the human rights culture that is emerging in U.K. legal and political discourse. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Women’s equality in Northern Ireland’s transition: intersectionality in theory and place

Women are invisible in mainstream analyses of the Northern Irish conflict. The prodigious literature is uninformed by gender analysis. These absences have discursive and material implications for tackling women’s inequality in a society in transition from armed conflict. Feminist intersectional theory counters and complicates essentialist constructions of identity. It aids understanding of the Northern Irish context by bringing into view issues of gender, sect and class. The tentative intersectional theoretical framework developed in this article is tested in an empirical study of women’s poverty. This supports the argument that intersectional analysis is required if the policy approach to women’s equality in Northern Ireland is to benefit the most marginalised women and thereby improve the prospects of building a more stable and peaceable society.     

Women’s international Democratic Federation,the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s

ABSTRACT

This article examines the work of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) with women from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It analyzes their role in the WIDF’s decision-making process and activities during a period marked by decolonization and the intensification of women’s rights activism outside Europe. This analysis contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which the WIDF’s official position on support for the rights of women in the Global South was translated into the practical work of organization. The article is based on materials from Moscow archives that have hitherto not been explored in research on the WIDF. It shows that, in spite of the WIDF’s formal anti-colonial stance, women from the Global South were not always given a voice or able to insert their demands into WIDF policy.