Women who do and women who don't,join the women's movement

Twenty-four women from five countries were asked to discuss their attitudes towards the women's movement. Half of this group were feminists and half were antifeminists. They ranged in background over class, race, age and sexual preference, and their comments formed the body of the book Women Who Do and Women Who Don't, Join the Women's Movement. This paper begins by discussing the women's movement as a social movement, its origins and the major issues involved in its struggle. The antifeminist ‘backlash’ is then analysed and its platforms clarified. The contributors' comments are summarised, bringing the issues alive, creating a diverse patterns of women's interpretations of ‘being female’. The issues of contention such as men, motherhood and the family are discussed, and the bases of the differences between feminists and antifeminists are analysed. Surprisingly, similarities between the two groups also emerge, particularly in terms of their experience of ‘self’. I conclude the paper by discussing why these splits among women occur, why one woman becomes a feminist while another is an antifeminist, and what this means for the future of women and of feminism.     

Feminism and feminist movements in the middle east,a preliminary exploration: Turkey,Egypt, Algeria,People's Democratic Republic of Yemen

Feminism, including in particular such notions as women's right to equality and their right to control their own lives, is, with respect to the Middle East's current civilization at any rate, an idea that did not arise indigenously, but that came to the Middle Eastern societies from ‘outside’. To predict and direct the future of that idea, and therefore the future of women in the Middle East—if this is indeed at all possible—an understanding of the development of feminism in the Middle East is crucial, including its transformations transplanted to a Middle Eastern, predominantly Islamic environment, and its different interpretations in the locally different cultures of the Middle East. It swiftly becomes apparent, in considering the history of feminism in the Middle East, that two forces in particular within Middle Eastern societies modify—hampering or aiding—the progress of feminism. First there are attitudes within the particular society, and the culture's and the sub-culture's formulations, formal and informal, regarding women. Second and perhaps as important, are the society's attitudes and relationship to feminism's civilization of origin, the Western world. Since the late nineteenth century, when feminist ideas first began to gain currency in the Middle East, a Middle Eastern society's formal stand on the position of women has often been perhaps the most sensitive index of the society's attitude to the West—its openness to, or its rejection of Western civilization. Thus Turkey's attitude of openness to Western civilization at the beginning of this century (with which this study begins) was epitomized by the abolition of the veil. More recently, the veiling of women in Iran has constituted perhaps the chief index and deliberately chosen symbol of Iran's rejection of Western civilization. The present article is the first of a series in which I will be exploring aspects of feminism in the Middle East.     

On the bottom rung: A discussion of women's work in sociology

Women, Women's Work and ‘Women's Studies’ are in a disadvantaged and marginal position within academic settings. This is a reflection of women's position in society in general, and it should be no surprise to find it to be the case in sociology as elsewhere. Women's studies has achieved some respectability within the social sciences, but rather than this being seen as a straightforward success, the disadvantages of this ‘respectability’ must be understood, as must the subtlety of male incorporation of feminist ideas not at a conscious level but within and through the male defined ethos of academia. The use of a qualitative methodology to get behind the ‘facts’ of qualitative differences in women's and men's positions is important. The lives of women postgraduates and researchers in Great Britain, those women on the bottom rung, can give us insights into the difficulties for women's studies and into the possibilities for the direction that attempts to redress the imbalances between men and women in academia might take.     

What women's studies programs do that mainstreaming can't

This article draws some conclusions about the limitations of ‘mainstreaming’, based on a comparison between the author's experiences as director of a ‘mainstreaming’ project (in this case, on Ethnic Studies) and her experiences as coordinator of a Women's Studies program. Integrating the curriculum and building autonomous programs are fundamentally different projects.‘Mainstreaming’, while important, cannot represent the full scope, complexity, vitality, and contextuality of Women's Studies. Women's Studies has its own subject, gender, just as other disciplines have their central subjects. The new body of knowledge and theory about gender cannot be assimilated into ‘traditional’ departments and disciplines. Women's Studies is in the process of constituting itself a discipline; and knowing a discipline implies familiarity with the central issues of a given discourse, a knowledge of its central questions and controversies, an awareness of resonances among texts, and participation in the institutions and activities generating new knowledge and ideas. It is this sense of relationship among texts, ideas, empirical findings, theories, even the personalities and visions of individual human beings that cannot be fully transmitted in any mainstreaming project. Only in autonomous programs can Women's Studies continue its evolution toward disciplinary status and achieve its full intellectual and political promise.     

The silencing of Simone de Beauvoir guess what's missing from the second sex

Inadequate, inaccurate English translations of works by feminist scholars can slow the advancement of international research in women's studies. We must begin to subject translations to the same critical attention we have focused on those sexist authoring and publishing practices that have defined women's interests as tangential to scholarly research.Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, one of the most widely known, classic essays on women's experience and a cornerstone of contemporary feminist theory, is available in only one English translation from the French. In that 1952 translation by a professor of zoology, Howard M. Parshley, over 10 per cent of the material in the original French edition has been deleted, including fully one-half of a chapter and the names of seventy-eight women in history. These unindicated deletions seriously undermine the integrity of Beauvoir's analysis of such important topics as the American and European nineteenth-century suffrage movements, and the development of socialist feminism in France.Compounding the confusion created by the deletions, are mistranslations of key philosophical terms. The phrase, ‘for-itself’, for example, which identifies a distinctive concept from Sartrean existentialism, has been rendered into English as its technical opposite, ‘in-itself’. These mistranslations obscure the philosophical context of Beauvoir's work and give the mistaken impression to the English reader that Beauvoir is a sloppy writer, and thinker.     

The Constitution of Afghanistan and Women’s Rights

This article argues that women’s human rights were and are being violated in Afghanistan regardless of who governs the country: Kings, secular rulers, Mujahideen or Taliban, or the incumbent internationally backed government of Karzai. The provisions of the new constitution regarding women’s rights are analysed under three categories: neutral, protective and discriminatory. It is argued that the current constitution is a step in the right direction but, far from protecting women’s rights effectively, it requires substantial revamping. The constitutional commitment to international human rights standards seems to be a hallow slogan as the constitution declares Islam as a state religion which clearly conflicts with women’s human rights standards in certain areas. The Constitution has empowered the Supreme Court to review whether human rights instruments are compatible with Islamic legal norms and, in case of conflict, precedence will be given to Islamic law. Keeping this in view, it is argued that Afghanistan’s ratification of the Women’s Convention without reservations has no real significance unless Islamic law dealing with women’s rights is reformed and reconciled with international women’s rights standards.     

Dame unise,feminist maiden who fares well with the patriarchy: Jessica Amanda Salmonson's ‘the prodigal daughter’ and the emerging tradition in feminist speculative fiction

In her discussion of recent feminist utopias, Joanna Russ notes that the authors have likely read one another and that their ‘works form a remarkably coherent group in their presentation of feminist concerns and the feminist analyses which are central to these concerns’ (Russ, 1981: 71). My essay further explores the emerging tradition in feminist speculative fiction. It notes the common elements connecting three novels—Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong (1976), Suzy McKee Charnas' Motherlines (1978), and Elizabeth A. Lynn's The Northern Girl (1980)—and analyses Jessica Amanda Salmonson's ‘The prodigal daughter’ (1981) in terms of its relationship to these connections. References to Louise Bernikow's Among Women (1980) link these feminist imaginative works to feminist reality, reality which is more closely adhered to by Salmonson than by the authors of the novels. While the novels' feminist protagonists succeed in isolation from the patriarchy, Salmonson's feminist hero, Dame Unise, succeeds because she is able to cooperate with a patriarch. Positive images of patriarchy are absent from the novels; Salmonson's story emphasizes such positive images.     

Cooperation and conflict: A case study of a women's research network in Norway

During four years (1978–82), 25–30 Norweigian women social scientists formed a research network of small local groups, studying ‘Women's mutual relations’ in various settings. Women's friendships, their cooperation in factories and local communities and in women's organizations were the focus of our research. This article, however, is not about the results of our research—although some of them are reported in the notes—but we describe the organization of our association, its purposes, structure and positive results, as well as our tendencies to build up conflict, fractionalism and withdrawal. The research network was established in opposition to male social science, both with respect to the choice of its main themes and its organizational form. A supportive work style, a ‘horizontal’ structure and a playing down of conflicts was more or less deliberately chosen by the network members. We discuss here some of the types of conflict that developed in the network, and the ways we dealt with them. Most conflicts were either solved ‘talking through’ or handled by avoidance. We ask the question if deliberate conflict avoidance is functional for a feminist network of organization. The case is made for a ‘horizontal network organization as a positive and fruitful supplement to usual academic organization structure.     

Objectivity and truth: Problems in doing feminist research

This paper examines principles of feminist research and discusses the authors' attempts to use these principles in a systematic way in their own research. Three principles of feminist research are identified: research should contribute to women's liberation through producing knowledge that can be used by women themselves; should use methods of gaining knowledge that are not oppressive; should continually develop a feminist critical perspective that questions dominant intellectual traditions and can reflect on its own development.Consciously applying these principles in a research study of the relation between changes in consciousness and the changes in the structural situation of individuals raised several methodological issues and dilemmas. These include the impossibility of creating a research process that completely erases the contradictions in the relationship between the researcher and the researched; the difficulties in analysing change as a process; the tension between the necessity of organizing the data and producing an analysis which reveals the totality of women's lives; and problems of validity, particularly those raised when the research process becomes part of the process of change.     

Breaking out—Women in adult education

Adult Education is primarily a women's service: women are the majority of staff and students yet they are not represented at the decision-making levels where resources are allocated. Adult Education is not as effective as it should be in providing open, life-long education, if the argument that when women achieve equality of numbers they will achieve equality of opportunity is to be believed. It still reinforces women's domestic and secondary role through its structures, policies and programmes and this, combined with its powerlessness within the British education system, reinforces the marginality of women as second class citizens. But this paper will argue that it has potential for women.     

A brief overview of the development of women's studies in the UK

This paper provides a brief overview of Women's Studies (WS) in the UK, drawing attention to its greatest expansion in adult education and, in general, non-degree granting areas of education. It further argues that this impressive diversity, at present, contributes to the invisibility of WS in the UK but that, potentially, the foundation of a National Women's Studies Association could make both the women who do WS, and WS itself, visible and powerful.     

‘Suddenly you've become somebody else’: A study of pregnancy and the creative woman

This pilot study is a woman-centered exploration of the effects of pregnancy on a woman artist's work, asking what changes in the work occur during pregnancy or as a result of pregnancy.Conventionally, conditions for artistic creation and for reproduction have been thought to be mutually exclusive, the one requiring self-centeredness and the other, selflessness. The women in this study reported instead that their work was augmented by this change and its product, motherhood. Subject matter and imagery, use of time, attitude about the world and the self were seen in retrospect—if not always at the time—to have benefitted. Having enough time to spend on one project or the other was the most significant conflict reported.Recent theories about and explorations of women's lives and ideas, particularly regarding preparation for motherhood, support what the subjects of this study reported about the multi- layered complexity of the experience. Beauvoir, Rich, Ruddick and Gilligan provide the theoretical background: patriarchal culture's use of biology marks women off as being significantly different from men; while this bodily distinction has been used to limit women, it need not be and may instead be a source of power and growth; maternal thinking has its own previously unacknowledged structures; and women's development, particularly in the valued category of morality, has a different basis than men's, in responsibility rather than in rights.Instead of dividing art from life, motherhood, if not pregnancy specifically, allowed, demanded, or called up a vision of enlargement and unity in social, spiritual, and universal terms, a transcendent philosophy that is not an escape but an embrace.     

The support function and social change—A feminist case history

The first part of this article describes the history of a Belgian anglophone organisation—W ♀ E (Women's Organisation for Equality)—from the perspective of its role in the process of social change and women's liberation. It then analyses the reasons for W ♀ E's longevity and effectiveness as a feminist support group and as a bridge for women emerging into feminism. Finally the paper suggests how W ♀ E might continue its effectiveness as a support group, but at a new level, taking into account the fact that though women are continuing to need support as they wake up, there is now a large group of awakened women who have been struggling as feminists for a long time.     

The impact of the women's decade on women of Sri Lanka

The International Women's Year awakened many to the position of women in Sri Lanka. The mass media flooded with discussions on women's issues; meetings and seminars were held. Women's organisations gained new strength with the grants placed at their disposal by foreign voluntary organisations for development projects for women. Women's seminars and conferences abroad increased significantly and more Sri Lankan women attended them. However, this is only a beginning: Sri Lankan women's organisations are composed largely of middle-class women—feminist groups must strive to reach all women in Sri Lanka.     

Inside an integration project: A case study of the relationship between balancing the curriculum and women's studies

This paper presents an ‘inside view’ of a federally-funded integration project in a small women's college in the Eastern US from the perspective of the project director. The author illustrates various stages and kinds of ‘Women's Studies’, pointing out that the integration project has resulted in increased Women's Studies course offerings, as well as a minor at the college. She makes distinctions between superficial integration and more profound efforts, which lead to a real struggle between traditional and feminist scholarship.     

The teacher's tale: On teaching women's studies

The teaching of Women's Studies is beset with difficulties as much as rewards: in this brief article some reflections are offered on the experience of being a teacher on a Women's Studies course. It is suggested that teaching Women's Studies often differs from teaching more conventional disciplines, but that this offers a chance for academic innovation.     

Indian women and the new movement

During the last few years there has been a resurgence of women's groups in India. Whereas, in previous years, women's struggles took place within a framework of the broader independence movement, women now are addressing issues of rape, dowry and marriage and property laws directly. This paper argues that women's organizations in India have received considerable support over these issues because they affect an urban middle-class elite and leave the status quo relatively untouched. Women's organizations should turn their attention to more fundamental issues of women's oppression within the context of hunger, poverty and work-issues which, hitherto, have been neglected.