Women's access to power in self-government municipalities of Oaxaca,Mexico: Describing their career tracks

The Usos y Costumbres system of Oaxaca, Mexico, is a form of indigenous self-government dating back to colonial times. In 1995, the constitution and electoral code of Oaxaca were amended so as to recognize such system as a legitimate form of municipal government. Since then, less than 2% of all mayors per triennium have been women. By drawing on in-depth interviews with all the 18 women who have become mayors since the CAP system was legalized, this paper describes women's paths to the mayor´s office. The methodological strategy involves a non-predefined typology consisting of four distinctly gendered career tracks. The typology allows to capture the main factors that shape women's access to the mayoralty (marital status, political party affiliation, community leadership and educational level), as well as the combination among them in specific social contexts.     

Ḣarim and Ḣijab: Seclusive and exclusive aspects of traditional Muslim dwelling and dress

Architectural constructs of the family dwelling and styles of women's outer garments for public wear are intricately intertwined with the sociocultural framework within which both women and men function. Although conventionally regarded as restrictions on women's free movement in society, it is also apparent that in the Muslim world dwelling and dress may be, and indeed are, used to advantage by women as a means of retaining privacy from male intrusion and for exerting power in a society ostensibly controlled by men.     

The Benefit Cap and the Complexity of Discrimination: <Emphasis Type="Italic">R</Emphasis> (<Emphasis Type="Italic">SG and others</Emphasis>) <Emphasis Type="Italic">v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions</Emphasis>

In R [on the application of SG and others (previously JS and others)] v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the United Kingdom Supreme Court evaluated the legality of the benefit cap. The Court was sharply divided but decided by a narrow margin that the benefit cap did not amount to a violation of the claimants’ human rights. While the majority accepted that the gender discrimination was justified, the Court noted that the current measures fell short of the United Kingdom’s responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This could prove of the outmost importance as the government elected in May 2015 has announced further reductions to the existing benefit cap. The case comment evaluates whether the Court paid enough attention to the multifaceted nature of poverty and discrimination, and argues that the impact the benefit cap has had specifically on women from black and ethnic minorities should have been considered.     

What a Difference a Decade Makes: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Coming to Power</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Second Coming</Emphasis>

A critical look at two books, Coming to Power – Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M, published in 1981, and its ‘long awaited sequel’, The Second Coming – A Leatherdyke Reader, published in 1996, yields many differences and similarities. Both books have been judged negatively or positively on the basis of their sadomasochistic content and in line with knee-jerk positions around the lesbian ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s. The feminist politics represented in each book and the connections to more general lesbian feminist concerns and developments of either the late 1970s (Coming to Power) or the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Second Coming) are often overlooked or dismissed. Comparing the kind of sex acts and personas fetishized in each book as well as the claims made for lesbian sm by its adherents often reveals more than the writers may have intended. A more nuanced reading of both books also reveals connections between lesbian feminism, particularly lesbian radical feminism and the sm dykes. Rather than being the ‘illegitimate children’ of lesbian feminism, as Coming to Power maintained in 1981, it is clear now that sm dykes and lesbian feminists are strange sisters who needed each other to define their particular politicized identities.     

speculating Latina radicalism: labour and motherhood in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Lunar Braceros 2125</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">2148</Emphasis>

This essay unpacks the utopian impulse in Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita’s novella Lunar Braceros 2125-2148 (2009). As speculative fiction that has strong, explicit critiques on labour and globalisation, Lunar Braceros crafts a future-historical and future-present world where racialised forms of labour exploitation are the norm. The novella offers the radical response of worker revolution that can only ever be a potential and desire. The novella does this by presenting an ambivalent labour politics that results in the dismantling of the family as a heteronormative unit and that depend on the figure of the lost radical mother. The intervention this essay makes into Latina/o studies and feminist studies is to rearticulate the figure of motherhood through a specific lens of radicalism that is both queer and proletarian. By thinking about Latina radicalism through the intersections of labour, gender and non-normative sexuality in the novella, we see that the lost mother figure disrupts capitalist patriarchy by offering radical potentiality.     

mediations on making <Emphasis Type="Italic">Aaj Kaal</Emphasis>

This article excavates a discussion on the mediations that informed the making of the film Aaj Kaal by Asian elders, in a project directed by Avtar Brah and coordinated by Jasbir Panesar with the film trainer Vipin Kumar. It brings this largely unknown and inventive film to the foreground of current developments in participative media research practices. The discussion explores the coming together of the ethnographic imagination and performative pedagogies during the course of an adult education community project centred on South Asian elders making a film. Collaborative dialogic encounters illuminate post-war British front rooms, the seaside and public spheres from what is usually an unlikely vantage point of view in public accounts.