Off-island hawaiians “making” ourselves at “home” : A [gendered] contradiction in terms?

This article explores some of the recent developments in movements to reassert Hawaiian sovereignty that occur in Hawai‘i, but with special reference to displaced nationalisms and political formations in Hawaiian communities off-island. I examine the gendered nature of the terms in which activists in the Hawaiian Islands describe and invoke diasporic Hawaiians, particularly in the calls they send out for diasporas to “return home” to Hawai‘i. I call attention to Hawaiian women’s prominence in some areas of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and the symbolic bases on which they draw in the process of forging such a position. The very process of making and remaking oneself, whether at home or not, is, among other things, always gendered. I argue for the difference that the infusion of a diasporic feminist sensibility could make to Hawaiian nationalist projects, pushing them further in the direction of specifically gendered possibilities of decolonization.     

“Everybody's looking at you!”: Girls negotiating the “femininity deficit” they incur in physical education

There is a growing awareness of the complex and largely negative attitudes many girls in the UK hold towards physical activity in general and Physical Education (PE) in particular. This research in the UK involves a qualitative study of six Year 9 girls' experiences and motivations in PE.Reflexive interpretation and biographical analysis of in-depth interviews are utilized to explore the themes of the relationship between “sportiness” and heterosexual desirability; and the polarized images of “tomboy” and “girlie.” Work by Connell [Connell, R.W. (1987). Gender and power. Cambridge: Polity Press.] on the gender order, and theories arising from the cultural analysis tradition on teenage girls' subcultures and identity formation are drawn on in order to make sense of the girls' narratives.The findings of this research reveal that images of teenage girls and young women being physically active are non-congruous with the traditional ideologies of acceptable femininity. This paper describes how these girls negotiate the contradictions and the tensions caused by the “femininity deficit” incurred in PE by creating “double identities” and living “split lives.”     

Faking it : The Story of “Ohh!”

This paper examines the phenomenon of faking orgasm in order to construct a critical analysis of heterosexual relations. Such an analysis, we argue, is central to the task of developing effective HIV/AIDS educational campaigns for heterosexual people. In the paper we examine the different narratives upon which heterosexual men and women rely when they are discussing their sexual and relationship experiences. We analyse these in terms of recent feminist theories of embodiment. We conclude by arguing the importance of this kind of analysis to HIV/AIDS prevention and education.     

“Girl talk”: gender, equity, and identity discourses in a school-based computer culture

This article describes how a feminist intervention project in Canada focused on girls' more equitable access to and use of computers created significant opportunities for girls to develop and experience new identities as technology ‘experts’ within their school. In addition to a significant increase in participants' own technological expertise, there was a marked shift in the ways in which they talked about and negotiated their own gender identities with teachers and other students. Most significantly, the participants in the project became increasingly vocal about what they saw as inequitable practices in the daily operation of the school as well as those they were subject to by their teachers. This created, within the otherwise resilient macro-culture of the school, a more supportive climate for the advancement of gender equity well beyond the confines of its computer labs. We suggest that while equity-oriented school-level change is notoriously difficult to sustain, its most enduring impact might rather be participants' initiation into a discourse to which they had not previously experienced school-sanctioned access: a discourse in which to give voice to gender-specific inequities too long quieted by complacent discourses of “equality for all.”     

Verifying the myth: olympic sex testing and the category “woman”

This paper interrogates the myth of a binary sex–gender system and its application to women through the practice of sex testing in international athletics. Sex testing—in which women athletes are evaluated to determine their suitability for competition as women—is premised upon the assumption that there are, and should be, two and only two forms of the human body—male and female. On the surface, it would appear that testing the sex of women competitors verifies the need for segregation and stratification of sex in athletic competition. Closer examination, however, reveals that the practice of sex testing actually makes visible both the constructedness of sex categories and the oppressiveness of their application.     

Performing Social Reparation: “Comfort Women” And The Path To Political Forgiveness

During WWII, 200,000 girls and young women from across Asia were sexually enslaved by Japan—a tragic history unearthed less than 20 years ago and still inadequately addressed by the Japanese government. This paper examines, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the legacy of this “comfort women” history, problematizing its attendant rituals of apology, “political forgiveness,” and reparation. The author analyzes the meaning of apology and forgiveness, and develops a typology of “reparation,“ concluding that what surviving “comfort women” have articulated is a model of “social reparation,” or a holistic goal of mending the past and restoring an international human community.     

“(L)Activists and Lattes”: Breastfeeding Advocacy as Domestic Performance

This article considers how “lactivists” (lactation activists) consciously stage the act of public breastfeeding as a means of political advocacy, cultural resistance, and ideological subversion. Through the exploration of a specific nurse-in protest (the 2004 Nurse at Starbucks campaign in Silver Spring, Maryland), the author explores how the “domestic performance” of nurse-ins force spectators to confront (and hopefully, reconsider) latent and overt assumptions about motherhood in relation to parenting proficiency, civic responsibility, maternal sexuality, and political efficacy. In so doing, the author discloses how nurse-ins subvent traditional perceptions of mothers and mothering as a way of instigating social change.     

White women as burden: On playing the role of feminist “experts” in china

This article explores the problems of international, collaborative feminist research by telling the story of two Canadian academics who embarked on a journey to do feminist research with a group of Chinese academics. The literature warns of the difficulties of collaboration and the dangers of power imbalances that are positional, procedural and representational. In this instance, the Canadians, despite their positional advantages, experienced little power in the planning of the research, feeling themselves as a burden rather than a boon at many points during the process. They analyze the reasons for this, and conclude that the content of their conversation mattered less than the form in which it was delivered. Despite a number of difficulties, the project was of value for the collaborators. For the Chinese, it was a chance for women faculty in less privileged universities to work together, with new resources, on a topic that needed validation. For the Canadians, it resulted in an increased appreciation for the specificity of North American feminism, varieties of Chinese feminism and the contextual nature of research methodologies. The article concludes with a discussion of the value and limits of universities' new emphasis on internationalism and its meaning for feminists with an emphasis on the value of such projects, if appropriately conceived and managed.     

“She's not really a woman, she's half a man”: Gendered discourses of embodiment in a French farming community

This paper is about constructions of embodiment in farming families in a community of the Aveyron region in Southern France. More particularly, it explores how the discursive representation of women's bodies both reproduces and legitimates unequal gender relations between women and men on the farm and in the local community. It is argued here that gender is constituted through the ways in which individuals live and construct their bodies within a particular social, cultural, and economic context. But because what is constructed as masculine is valued over what is constructed as feminine, women's bodies and abilities are inferiorised and devalued. In the farming context discussed in this paper, farm women are never seen as having bodies which enable them to farm in the same terms as men. Women's work on the farm is seen as only secondary and complementary to that of farmers in the same way that women's bodies are seen to be lacking in masculine attributes which are defined as central to farming. So that even when women show that they can run farms by themselves and do work which is usually defined as masculine, they are either represented as only being able to do so because they have male help, or because their bodies and attributes do not conform to culturally constructed heterosexual norms of femininity.     

“All my life is one big nursing home”: Russian immigrant women in israel speak about double caregiver stress

Adding elder care to the list of women's multiple roles may significantly jeopardize their well-being and health. This qualitative study explored the experiences with multiple roles among 20 middle-aged Jewish women who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union with their extended families. Before emigration, most informants were professionals or white-collar workers, but in Israel they experienced occupational downgrading and ended up working as attendants or nurses in geriatric care. At home, these women of the “sandwich” generation acted as informal caregivers to their husbands, children and elderly parents. Coupled with the challenges of resettlement, this double caregiver stress led to significant emotional and physical burnout. Exhaustion and tight time budgets led to health problems and poor self-care among these women. The informants' social networks were mainly coethnic, and their coping tools drew on the Israeli–Russian community. The study concludes that, even in the relatively egalitarian Russian–Soviet gender system, women function as principal caregivers, often at the expense of other life goals.     

Research partnerships : A discussion paper based on case studies from “The place of Alcohol in the lives of New Zealand women” project

Research partnerships between anthropologists and the individuals or groups with whom they work may take a variety of forms. This paper examines four partnerships which evolved during the research project, “The Place of Alcohol in the Lives of New Zealand Women.” These partnerships were between anthropologists and Samoan, Cook Islands, Maori, and Lesbian women living in New Zealand. The strengths and weaknesses of each relationship are evaluated in an attempt to evolve a range of successful models of research partnership.     

Aspects of social differentiation in rural England,c. 1580–1660

The article attempts to identify and account for changes in local social relations which accompanied economic and social‐structural change in early‐modern England. An overview of recent findings is provided to highlight both the enduring characteristics of rural society in the period and the elements of change. Next it is argued that the aspects of change can be interpreted as a process of incorporation with economic, administrative and cultural dimensions which had the ultimate effect of promoting integration nationally, but differentiation locally. Particular illustration of this general argument is given in an examination of change in the Essex village of Terling.     

A feminist family: the stracheys and feminism,c. 1860-1950

This article explores the importance and meaning of feminism within one prominent British family across two generations, spanning the later nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It discusses the changing nature of feminist activism, the ways in which suffrage and feminist activities could become full-time occupations for some women and looks at the links between personal or personal relationships that this sometimes entailed. Focusing on the younger women in the family, however, it also shows how feminism came to be seen as antithetical to modernity and as having little to offer those who sought personal and sexual emancipation in the period after the First World War.     

Menstrual fictions: languages of medicine and menstruation,c. 1850–1930

Abstract

Gynaecological narratives of menstruation in the late nineteenth century placed woman firmly within the orbit of domesticity by virtue of her biology. In the rhetoric of medical ‘truths’, menstruation was defined as a ‘ldisability’, a physical ‘illness’ and a threat to emotional stability. Thus, it was argued, women could not hope to achieve equality with men when the dictates of Nature (as opposed to society) stipulated that they remain mothers, carers and homemakers. This article explores the notion that narratives of menstruation were created and articulated through subjective readings of social and cultural truths: menstruation was perceived and defined through the medium of ideas relating to what femininity was and ought to be. An examination of the medical languages of menstruation articulated between 1850 and 1930 reveals that the creation of menstrual knowledge was in perpetual flux. What remained a constant, however, was the appropriation of the female body as a field for the definition of ‘difference’