Intersections and Inconsistencies. Framing Gender in Right-Wing Populist Discourses in Austria

The paper contributes to the discussion on (re)framing processes of gender equality focusing in particular on right-wing populist discourses in Austria. Our frame analysis of 50 texts published by four right-wing (extremist) parties and movements reveals that traditional (family) values, women's “free choice”, and LGBT rights play important roles in right-wing populist (re)framing processes of gender equality. Our data also show notable inconsistencies with regard to the meanings attached to gender and gender equality within the discourses studied. For instance, right-wing populists are, on the one hand, concerned with the protection of “the traditional family”—which means being against e.g. same-sex marriage and emphasizing women's wish to stay at home. On the other hand, these same actors argue against immigration by using gender arguments in a different and even contradictory manner, claiming that e.g. Muslim men are bound by their “culture” to discriminate women and LGBT people. Our intersectional approach, analytically focusing on different meanings that gender equality acquires at the intersections with ethnicity, nationality, religion/culture, and sexuality, shows that within right-wing populist discourses inconsistencies in the framing of gender and gender equality arise in relation to the shifting meanings attributed to the essential dichotomy of “us” versus “them”. While the discursive construction of antagonistic positions is essential for right-wing populism, the groups/people designated to fill these “slots” might differ according to topic. We argue that “intersectionality from above” is one of populists' instruments to gloss over inconsistencies and to (re)frame gender equality in an on-going process of (re)negotiations of meanings.     

Imagining (the) Difference: Gender,Ethnicity and Metaphors of Nation

This article critiques the way in which three feminist authors reinscribe traditional liberal values when seeking new ways of thinking about the nation. It suggests that in rejecting affective or embodied metaphors, such as community or kinship, the authors fall into the trap of reinscribing values which have historically excluded women and ethnic or racial minorities from full participation in the polity. The article argues for a rejection of the affect/rationality model which underpins these arguments and suggests that new metaphors for the nation will emerge as those who have been excluded claim a place in the polity.     

The Effects of Ethnic Identity,Ethnicity, and Gender on Adolescent Well-Being

Ethnic identity was conceptualized into three categories: (1) unexamined, (2) searching for identity, and (3) achieved ethnic identity. Analyses of data collected from 12,386 adolescents showed that ethnic identity is an important qualifier of the relationships between independent variables of ethnicity and gender, and dependent variables of global self-esteem, academic self-confidence, and purpose in life. Whites and Native Americans had lower ethnic identity, and Blacks and Hispanics had higher ethnic identity. Asians and repondents of mixed ethnicity had intermediate levels of ethnic identity. The greater the ethnic identity, the higher the self-esteem, purpose in life and self-confidence. This mechanism applies to ethnic minorities and to women among whom achieved ethnic identity may blunt the negative effects of social denigration and stereotyping, and it applies to whites, too. The paper argues that multiculturalism in the schools can increase ethnic identity.     

Sport,Gender and Ethnicity: Practises of Symbolic Inclusion/Exclusion

In this paper symbolic inclusion/exclusion processes in sport with respect to gender and ethnicity among adolescents (n = 1025) are analyzed from a social-critical perspective. It was found that sport participation preferences of young people are still influenced by dominant normative gendered and racial/ethnic images. Sport can serve not only as an agent of integration among youth, but is also used to differentiate and discriminate. On one hand sport participation is less predictable with respect to gender, due for example to interactions with ethnicity. Although ethnic minority girls participate the least in sport, ‘black,’ traditional ‘masculine‘ sports such as soccer and fighting/self-defense are valued relative highly. On the other hand, the data show that especially the male adolescents symbolically exclude girls from ‘masculine’ sports such as soccer; in addition for both ethnic minority and majority boys the fear of being labelled as a ‘sissy’ works as a strong mechanism of self-exclusion from participation in traditional ‘feminine’ sports. However, stereotypical normative images are not only confirmed through sport (participation), but also continually challenged.Researcher/lecturer, Tilburg University. Research interest in inclusionary and exclusionary mechanisms in sport, especially with respect to gender, ethnicity and sexuality.Senior researcher, Utrecht University. Major research interest in gender, ethnicity and leadership positions in sport.     

Predictors of Level of Voice in Adolescent Girls: Ethnicity,Attachment, and Gender Role Socialization

The current study empirically examined predictors of level of voice (ethnicity, attachment, and gender role socialization) in a diverse sample of 108 14-year-old girls. Structural equation modeling results indicated that parental attachment predicted level of voice with authority figures, and gender role socialization predicted level of voice with authority figures and peers. Both masculinity and femininity were salient for higher levels of voice with authority figures whereas higher scores on masculinity contributed to higher levels of voice with peers. These findings suggest that, contrary to previous theoretical work, femininity itself is not a risk factor for low levels of voice. In addition, African-American girls had higher levels of voice with teachers and classmates than did Caucasian girls, and girls who were in a school with a greater concentration of ethnic minorities had higher levels of voice with peers than did girls at a school with fewer minority students.

Holy Motherhood: gender,dynasty, and visual culture in the later Middle Ages ELIZABETH L'ESTRANGE

The following books are reviewed.

Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: the rise of Women's political culture, 1830-1900 KATHRYN KISH SKLAR, 1995 New Haven: Yale University Press. xviii + 436 pp., ISBN 0 300 05912 4, $25

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: her progress toward utopia with selected writings CAROL FARLEY KESSLER, 1995 Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. xi +316 pp., ISBN 0 8156 2644 4, hardback, £27.50, ISBN 0 8156 2644 5, paperback, £15

Always a Sister: the feminism of Lillian D. Wald DORIS GROSHEN DANIELS, 1995 New York: The Feminist Press. x +207 pp., ISBN 1 55861 113 4, paperback,$12.95

Good Enough Mothering? Feminist Perspectives on Lone Motherhood ELIZABETH BORTOLAIA SILVA (Ed.), 1996 London: Routledge. ix + 241 pp., ISBN 0 415 12889 7, hardback, £47.50, ISBN 0 415 12890 0, paperback, £14.99

The Case for Women in Medieval Culture ALCUIN BLAMIRES, 1997 Oxford: Clarendon Press. viii + 279 pp., ISBN 0 19 818256 2, £40.00

Midwives, Society and Childbirth: debates and controversies in the modern period HILARY MARLAND &; ANNE-MARIE RAFFERTY (Eds), 1997 London: Routledge. xiii + 278pp., ISBN 0 415 13328 9, hardback, £50.00

Black British Feminism: a reader HEIDI SAFIA MIRZA (Ed.), 1997 York: Routledge. xiv + 297pp., paperback, £14.99

Dear Laughing Motorbyke: letters from women welders of the Second World War MARGARETTA JOLLY (Ed.), 1997 London: Scarlet Press. x + 174pp., paperback, £9.99

Women, Guerrillas, and Love: understanding war in Central America ILEANA RODRÍGUEZ, 1996 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. xxv + 183pp., $19.95

The New Woman: fiction and feminism at the fin-de-siécle SALLY LEDGER, 1997 Manchester: Manchester University Press. vii + 216pp., ISBN 0 7190 4092 2, hardback, £35, ISBN 0 7190 4093, paperback, £13.99

Single Mothers in an International Context: mothers or workers? SIMON DUNCAN &; ROSALIND EDWARDS (Eds), 1997 London: UCL Press. ix + 285 pp., ISBN 1 85728 791 6, paperback, £13.95

Moving the Goalposts: a history of sport and society since 1945 MARTIN POLLEY, 1998 London: Routledge. xii + 236 pp., ISBN 0 415 14217 2, paperback, £12.99

Imagining Home, Gender, ‘Race’ and National Identity, 1945-64 WENDY WEBSTER, 1998 London: UCL Press. 240 pp., ISBN 1 85728 350 3, hardback, £40.00, ISBN 1 8572 8 3511, paperback, £12.95

Faces of Feminism: an activist's reflections on the Women's Movement SHEILA TOBIAS, 1997 Oxford: Westview Press. xvi + 332 pp., ISBN 0 8133 2842 X, hardback, £17.95     

Gender, ‘Race’, Ethnicity in Art Practice in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Annie E. Coombes and Penny Siopis in Conversation

Siopis has always engaged in a critical and controversial way with the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in South Africa. For politically sensitive artists whose work has involved confronting the injustices of apartheid, the current post-apartheid situation has forced a reassessment of their practice and the terms on which they might engage with the fundamental changes which are now affecting all of South African society. Where mythologies of race and ethnicity have been strategically foregrounded in the art of any engaged artist, to the exclusion of many other concerns, the demise of apartheid offers the possibility of exploring other dimensions of lived experience in South Africa. For feminists, this is potentially a very positive moment when questions of gender - so long subordinated to the structural issue of ‘race’ under apartheid - can now be explored. Penny Siopis' work has long been concerned with the lived and historical relations between black and white women in South Africa. The discussion focuses on the ambivalent and dependent relationships formed between white middle-class women and black domestic labour during apartheid. Siopis' work engages with how the appropriation of black women's time, lives, labour and bodies has shaped her ‘own’ history.     

Susannah Izzard and Nicola Barden,eds. Rethinking Gender and Therapy: The Changing Identities of Women.. Philadelphia: Open UP, 2001

Alice Walker, by Maria Lauret (New York: St. Martin's P, 2000).

Power, Race, and Gender in Academe: Strangers in the Tower?, edited by Shirley Geok‐Lin Lim and María Herrera‐Sobek (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2000).

Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman, by Frances Esquibel Tywoniak (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000).

Just Anger: Representing Women's Anger in Early Modern England, by Gwynne Kennedy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000).

Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920, by Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1999).

States of Conflict: bender, Violence and Resistance, edited by Susie Jacobs, Ruth Jacobson and Jennifer Marchbank (London and New York: Zed Books, 2000).

The Hysteric's Guide to the Future Female Subject, by Juliet Flower MacCannell (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000).

The Sounds of Feminist Theory, by Ruth Salvaggio (Albany: State U of New York P, 1999).

Literary Feminisms, by Ruth Robbins (New York: St. Martin's P, 2000).

Women and Faith: Catholic Religious Life in Italy from Late Antiquity to the Present, edited by Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999).

Disarming the Nation: Women's Writing and the American Civil War, by Elizabeth Young (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999).

Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit, by Suzanne Smith (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999).

Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s, edited by Hilary Radner and Moya Luckett (Minneapolis and London: U of Minneapolis P, 1999).

Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, by Cynthia Enloe (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000).     

Ethnicity and adjustment: A study of the self-image of Anglo-, Greek-, and Italian-Australian working class adolescents

Two measures of adjustment, the Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory and the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire, were administered to a sample of 450 working class Anglo-, Greek-, and Italian-Australian adolescents in years 9 and 11 of 9 Melbourne high schools. Anglo- and Greek-Australian adolescents scored similarly and significantly higher than Italian-Australians on a number of subscales, suggesting that culture conflict may be an influential factor in the adjustment of Italian-Australians, but not Greek-Australians. Significant differences between the minority groups, in favor of Greek-Australians, were interpreted as resulting from the relative differences in institutional support for and press toward assimilation of the two groups.     

Gender,Sexuality and the Theory of Seduction

Fletcher seeks to readdress the sex-gender-sexuality distinctions and the Lacanian theorization of sexual difference in the framework of Jean Laplanche's generalized theory of primal seduction. In particular he addresses the double-bind of phallocentrism, as outlined by Jacqueline Rose and Juliet Mitchell, that seems to be entailed by the requirements of a symbolic, constructionist account of the unconscious and the divided subject. He argues that Laplanche's generalized theory of seduction elaborates an account of the formation of the unconscious as a separate mental system and of the sexual drives as a result of the signifying relations with the other, the adult other of personal pre-history, and of the consequent entry into symbolization. This moment of seduction/translation/primal repression is rigorously distinguished from the secondary moments of the Oedipus and castration complexes which are conceived as secondary forms of binding and translation of the enigmatic signifiers implanted by the adult (which includes assignations of gender). Fletcher argues that the symbolic, constructionist requirement is met - no castration without representation - without its reversal as in Lacanian theory into the very different, phallocentric position - no representation without castration. This has important implications for the theorization of dissident sexual subjectivities as well of the specificity of female sexuality.