Women and drunken sociology: Developing a feminist analysis

The purpose of this paper is to outline some of the key areas of concern which relate to women and alcohol and to frame these issues within a feminist perspective. Five areas of discussion include: (1) alcohol research as multidisciplinary and multisexist; (2) ‘drunken sociology’ and the development or lack of development of the women's issue; (3) the women and alcohol issue thus far; (4) the need for a feminist perspective and women as passive consumers and economic targets and (5) alcoholism, addictions or just plain old dependency? It is hoped that the discussion presented in this paper will highlight some of the difficulties which confront feminist scholars working in this particular field of study.     

Changing the rules of the game: Reflections toward a feminist analysis of sport

Sport, play and games are institutionalized forms of activity used to help maintain male cultural hegemony. Despite reform which has improved access to sport for highly skilled females, the vast majority of girls and women are still systematically denied opportunities to develop physical competence. Imposition of various social control mechanisms enforces this denial, serving to disable women and to perpetuate women's lack of control over our bodies. Despite the thorough identification of sport with masculinity, its strong symbolic value for patriarchy, and women's lack of full access, sport, play, and games have received little attention from feminist scholars. The dynamics which perpetuate a lack of feminist dialogue about sport may stem from the dualistic view which supports patriarchy, and its influence even on feminist scholars. Homophobia, lesbian-baiting, fear, and lack of understanding among those who could engage in the dialogue are further barriers. Yet sport may have the potential to be reclaimed and to function for women's benefit. A shift in framework must first occur, so that women-centered questions form the bases of our analyses of sport. Women-centered questions in two areas, sport and women's sense of meaning of self, and sport and women's sexuality, give rise to a rich vision of sport as a women-defined and women-serving endeavor, useful in cracking the foundations of patriarchal control. While reconceptualization of support is a difficult task, it must begin with changes in the concept of domination and submission upon which sport under patriarchy is based. Eliminating this expression of dualism may enable women to use the sport experience to help reclaim ourselves as unified, self-controlling women.     

A feminist analysis of the new right

For some years now, the phenomenon known as The New Right has been developing in the United States, and although there is growing recognition of its destructiveness, there is little understanding of its real nature.At first examination The New Right seems to hold contradictory or incongruous beliefs and values, but placed within the context of fascism, authoritarianism, and ultimately masculism, the whole system of doctrine begins to make sense.While ostensibly supporting traditionalist principles of Christianity, American patriotism, and free enterprise economics, The New Right really encompasses groups of individuals unable to negotiate the uncertainties of lived existence and the fear of death and non-being. Drawn, therefore, to the consciousness of authoritarian rigidity, they seek to reinforce a flimsy structure of salvation by insisting upon absolute agreement with their perspective.The entire system of thought and behavior rests upon an alienation from nature lodged in patriarchal, masculist consciousness.Understanding this structure helps us to deal more effectively with The New Right and reinforces our will to oppose it.     

Citizenship: Towards a feminist synthesis

A synthesis of rights and participatory approaches to citizenship, linked through the notion of human agency, is proposed as the basis for a feminist theory of citizenship. Such a theory has to address citizenship's exclusionary power in relation to both nation-state ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’. With regard to the former, the article argues that a feminist theory and politics of citizenship must embrace an internationalist agenda. With regard to the latter, it offers the concept of a ‘differentiated universalism’ as an attempt to reconcile the universalism which lies at the heart of citizenship with the demands of a politics of difference. Embracing also the reconstruction of the public-private dichotomy, citizenship, reconceptualized in this way, can, it is argued, provide us with an important theoretical and political tool.     

Depoliticising the personal : A feminist slogan in feminist therapy

One of the great insights of second wave feminism was the recognition that “the personal is political.” Many feminist psychologists (both practitioners and researchers) claim a strong commitment to this slogan and attempt to implement it through their theory and practice. This article explores four interpretations of “the personal is political” in feminist psychological writing. It is argued that far from achieving radical feminist goals, psychological interpretations serve: (1) to personalise the political, translating social, economic, and ecological concerns into individual psychological matters; (2) to foster revolution “from within” at the expense of political change in the outside world; (3) that insofar as it aims uncritically to “validate women's experience,” it ignores the social and political factors which shape experience; and (4) that the concept of “empowerment” depends upon a radical split between the “personal” and the “political”. In sum, it is concluded that femenist acknowledgement that the personal really is political means rejecting psychology.     

Anatomy of difference: Toward a classification of feminist theory

If we re-examine the disparate views and goals of feminist theorists, both historically and in the present, we find that they can be divided according to the position they have taken on the question of the importance or unimportance of sex/gender difference. The minimizers opt for structures which unite the female with human enterprises from which she has too often been excluded, and the maximizers articulate patterns expressive of the unique perspective of the female. Both positions encompass many different theorist and groups. Each can best be understood by envisioning a continuum which moves from the most conservative view, a rationale for the status quo, (‘human rights’ or ‘separate spheres’) to the most radical, a total transformation of society (abolition of exclusive female reproductive capacities or total separation of the sexes). These two spectra are mediated by several views which partake of both attitudes: Gerda Lerner's concept of woman as majority, Julia Kristeva's vision of difference in unity, Black and Third World feminism's linking of socialist revolution and the positive values of women of color. Perhaps a more suggestive image than linear continua is the spiral of the DNA molecule. Its two interwined strands are linked together but always moving and changing as the historical arguments are re-used in contemporary situations; characteristics are linked, traded, and transformed in the process.     

crisis,austerity and gendered governance: a feminist perspective

Feminist scholars have been highly attentive to the ways that crises have become an everyday technique of global governance. They are particularly sensitive to the mechanisms through which ‘crisis management’ entrenches the power of particular economic orders and constrains the possibilities, and space, for contestation and critique. This paper seeks to contribute to but also to extend existing feminist research on financial crisis by arguing that, over the course of what has commonly been labelled the ‘global financial crisis’, the emergence of ‘crisis governance feminism’ has enabled existing structures and mechanisms of gendered privilege, such as the global financial industry, to suppress calls for their overhaul and to re-entrench their power in the global political economy. Adopting a discursive approach to gender and governance that situates gender centrally in understanding governance discourses and their reproduction of common sense (about what people do, how they labour, where they invest and so on), this paper argues that the governance of crisis in the contemporary era, in particular the various actors, institutions, policies and ideas that have sought to describe and ‘contain’ the global financial crisis, are gendered. Gender has become, in the contemporary global political economy, a technique of governance, and with deleterious effects. Despite inciting more discussion of ‘gender’ in economic systems than ever before (particularly in terms of discussions of ‘economic competitiveness’), this paper argues that the ‘global financial crisis’ has precipitated and continues to reproduce techniques of governance that trivialise feminist concerns while further embedding a masculinised, white and elitist culture of global financial privilege.