The feminist movement in Taiwan, 1972–87

Abstract

The definition of the women's movement has caused a certain degree of confusion in the women's studies community in Taiwan. Before 1986 it was debated whether there was or had ever been a women's movement at all on the island, for gender equality had been guaranteed by the 1947 Constitution, and hence some people questioned the desirability and potential impact of such a movement. Afterwards, as social movements collected momentum and popular support, the tendency has been to define the women's movement broadly to include all types of women's group activities.     

Paid work and socio-political consciousness of garment workers in Bangladesh

During the era of globalization, while international capital and world market factories are shaping the course of industrialization and “development” in many countries, it remains to be seen how far such “development” is conducive to increasing and improving women's paid work specifically, and labour rights, and empowerment in general. Using my research in Bangladesh, I juxtapose garment workers' experience to assess the implications of world market factories on women workers, their wages, work conditions, skill development, organizational links, and empowerment. In this article, I argue that women's multiple responsibilities and specific social locations as women and paid workers create distinctive form of activism and political consciousness. In addition, I suggest that the intersections of women's lives in the family and the workplace and their networks with other women create what Morgan and Bookman (1988) call “double consciousness” as women and as workers. This double consciousness generates multiple forms of resistance and social movements against the nexus between the state, multinational and local entrepreneurs.     

The Failures of Neo‐Liberal State Building in Iraq: Assessing Australia's Post‐Conflict Reconstruction and Development Initiatives

This article examines Australia's post‐conflict reconstruction and development initiatives in Iraq following the intervention of 2003. Overall, it finds that Australia privileged the neo‐liberal model of post‐conflict state building by investing in projects that would enhance the capacity of the new Iraqi state, its key institutions and the private sector towards the imposition of a liberal democracy and a free‐market economy. To demonstrate, this article documents the failures of the Australian government's stated aims to “support agriculture” and “support vulnerable populations” via interviews conducted in Iraq with rural farmers and tribal members and those working in, or the beneficiaries of, Iraq's disability sector. It concludes by noting that such failures are not only indicative of the inadequacy of the neo‐liberal state building model, but also that these failures point the way forward for future post‐conflict reconstruction and development projects which ought to be premised on a genuine and sustained commitment to addressing the needs of those made most vulnerable by war and regime change.     

IRAN’S STRUGGLE FOR STRATEGIC DOMINANCE IN A POST-ISIS IRAQ

Iran's influence and presence in Iraq have increased significantly in recent years. The collapse of the Saddam's dictatorship in 2003, after the US invasion, served to inflate Iran's influence in Iraq, particularly in the post-ISIS era. In this connection, Iran has used various means and tools to develop its strategy in Iraq. This article argues that Iran's current strategy in Iraq stems from a Realpolitik agenda rather than an ideological one, concerned more with political, economic, and security interests than pursuing revolutionary objectives per se. To this end, Tehran has largely relied on long-established relationships with several pro-Iranian political parties and militia groups. These relationships are often couched in religious ideological terms as a foundation and justification for its future strategy in post-ISIS Iraq. The questions that this paper will address are the following: what was Iran's role in defeating ISIS in Iraq? How has Tehran benefitted from its long-term relationships with Iraqi political parties and militia groups? What are the Iranian sources of power in Iraq and how do they help Iran gain strategic dominance in Iraq?     

Sexual Slander and the 1965/66 Mass Killings in Indonesia: Political and Methodological Considerations

Indonesia has been haunted by the “spectre of communism” since the putsch by military officers on 1 October 1965. That event saw the country's top brass murdered and the military attributing this putsch to the Communist Party. The genocide that followed was triggered by a campaign of sexual slander. This led to the real coup and the replacement of President Sukarno by General Suharto. Today, accusations about communism continue to play a major role in public life and state control remains shored up by control over women's bodies. This article introduces the putsch and the socialist women's organisation Gerwani, members of which were, at the time, accused of sexual debauchery. The focus is on the question of how Gerwani was portrayed in the aftermath of the putsch and how this affects the contemporary women's movement. It is found that women's political agency has been restricted, being associated with sexual debauchery and social turmoil. State women's organisations were set up and women's organisations forced to help build a “stable” society, based on women's subordination. The more independent women's groups were afraid to be labelled “new Gerwani ” as that would unleash strong state repression. This article assesses the implications of these events for the post-1998 period of Reformasi and reviews some recent analyses of 1965, state terrorism and violence and reveals blind spots in dealing with gender and sexual politics. It is argued that the slander against Gerwani is downplayed in these analyses. In fact, this slander was the spark without which the bloodbath would not have happened and would not have acquired its gruesome significance.     

Hygienic beauty: discussing Ottoman-Muslim female beauty,health and hygiene in the Hamidian Era

This article examines discussions on Ottoman-Muslim female beauty, health and hygiene in the Hamidian Era (1876–1909). Analysing the Hamidian popular press, advice literature and textbooks for girls, the article argues that these discussions were more than just female ‘physical culture’ debates, involving larger issues of late-Ottoman regeneration. Wars, epidemics, massive migration movements and fluctuations in population pushed the late-Ottoman state to create healthy generations as a productive force to secure the Empire's future in general and the Ottoman Muslim population's welfare in particular. Maintaining good health expanded from a religious obligation into now also becoming a patriotic duty incumbent upon Ottoman subjects knowing and applying modern hygienic principles. Focus on Ottoman-Muslim women's procreativity shifted female beauty into a public discussion, now defined as a reflection of health. The new hygienic beauty discourse distinguished between preserving vs. harming one's health in the face of Western fashions and cosmetics: healthy beauty mirrored a ‘good complexion’.     

The rise of Femi‐Nazis? Female participation in right‐extremist movements in unified Germany

German feminist scholars have recently come to argue that female involvement in right‐extremist causes is grounded in gender‐specific motives. They have also begun to uncover a troubling link between new patterns of female political engagement (ranging from electoral mobilisation to violent streetfighting) and their own efforts to promote an independent women's consciousness since the 1960s. This article develops a typology of New Right women, characterised here as Femi‐Nazis, evincing different levels of sympathy for, identification with, and participation in radical and extremist movements. It then explores five issue orientations distinguishing New Right women of the 1990s from the Old and New Right men of the 1940s and 1990s, suggesting that these women have developed an independent, self‐assertive political consciousness without internalising feminism's broader aims of diversity and inclusion. The article concludes with reflections on the interplay of ‘feminist’ consciousness and ultra‐nationalist qua xenophobic attitudes, and on the dilemmas Femi‐Nazi thinking poses for feminist identity in united Germany.     

Women's Organisations and the Politics of Gender in Cuba's Urban Insurrection (1952–1958)

This article sheds new light on Cuba's urban insurrection to oust Fulgencio Batista by focusing on two all‐women's anti‐Batista groups. It charts the origins and developments of the groups, explores their conceptions about the importance of women's political action and examines the impact that participating in the insurrection had on group members. The article complicates long‐standing assumptions about women's low levels of participation in the insurrection and the absence of demands for gender equity among those who did participate by noting that some older women militants had histories with the feminist movement of the 1930s, and that many younger women were forced by the circumstances of the insurrection to confront and challenge contemporary gender norms.     

Clientelism: factionalism in the allocation of public resources in Iraq after 2003

This article examines clientelism in Iraq as a case study of one form of corruption. Iraq is an unusual case of corruption, because a key feature of Iraq's corrupt environment is an institutionalised factional political system based on sectarian quotas. The article explores the many links between clientelism and political factionalism, discussing whether clientelism arose because of factionalism, or whether factionalism merely determines the ways that clientelism currently operates in Iraq. Using fieldwork data, the findings show there are two distinct levels of clientelism in Iraq, both of which are linked to political factions: the individual level and the organisational level. First, clientelism at the individual level entails the elites of many political factions regarding ‘money politics’ as a means of influence in Iraq/Kurdistan by buying people's affiliations and thereby governing people. Second, clientelism at the organisational level entails that the spoils of political office are shared out among the elites of the political factions in a proportionate fashion. The article concludes that clientelism is a form of political rather than economic corruption; and that while there may be some immediate value in clientelism, its long-term harm outweighs its short-term value.     

Us strategy in the middle east and the 2004 presidential election 9/11: towards a redefinition of america's role in the world

September 11th dramatically changed the geopolitical landscape for the United States. Though President Bush was elected as a domestic policy president, the war against radical Islam has become the central theme of his presidency. In this war, adhering to the analyses of the neoconservatives, the President believes that the region's tyrannies are a breeding ground for Islamic extremism. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein's tyranny and replacing it with a more democratic regime is the start of a long process of liberalization of the Arab world that will have reverberations for years to come. Though Senator John Kerry has based his 2004 presidential campaign on criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy, if Kerry were elected president, his Iraq policies would actually differ little from those of Bush.     

The sins of Saddam

Whatever evidence emerges of Weapons of Mass Destruction in postwar Iraq, the fact remains that Iraq was the archetypal international rule‐breaker during Saddam Hussein's 24‐year dictatorship for transgressions ranging from WMD to genocide.     

Displaying the Worldview of Japanese Fascism: The Tokyo Thought War Exhibition of 1938

ABSTRACT:

This essay explores an imperial state exhibition held in Tokyo in 1938 and explains how the exhibition displayed a fascist worldview of historical crisis and national regeneration that was taking shape in Japan in the late 1930s. The exhibition – entitled the Thought War Exhibition (Shisōsen tenrankai) – was curated by the Japanese state's newly formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) and held in Takashimaya Department Store in downtown Tokyo. Comprised of materials related to the Communist International, the Spanish Civil War, the national liberation struggle in China, and the communist and anticolonial movements inside the Japanese Empire, the Exhibition portrayed Japan's invasion of the Chinese mainland in 1937 as an extension of a global thought war against communism, requiring all imperial subjects to purify themselves of foreign influences and mobilize for national thought defense. While on the surface this Exhibition was an example of prewar state propaganda, it also expressed a fascist worldview that was coalescing in the Japanese state in the late 1930s. This essay investigates how this fascist worldview was exhibited in a sequence of displays, including dioramas, panoramas, illuminated maps, and display cases, and how these displays revealed constitutive contradictions that underwrote the formation of fascism in Japan.     

Women's industrial employment in Kerala,India

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamics of relations of production in Kerala industry in regard to women's employment opportunities. The changing conditions of women's industrial employment in India, and in Kerala in particular, should be examined at two levels: wage employment, especially in traditional industries; and self-employment, ranging from women's small-scale enterprises to relatively large-scale enterprises run by voluntary organizations of women, charitable institutions, and women's self-help organizations. Income opportunities are provided at both levels, and a common unifying thread is the predominantly casual nature of the work. Casual work is defined as any way of making a living that lacks a moderate degree of security of income and employment, and it is work characterized by informal relations of production.     

Alternate Paths to Power? Women's Political Representation in Nicaragua

Political alternate positions (otherwise known as substitutes) can have important effects on women's abilities to enter politics. Using the case of Nicaragua, this study assesses whether these alternate positions are being used to increase women's political representation or as a tool to undermine women's advancement into positions of power. By examining patterns of women's representation as candidates in the 1996, 2001, and 2006 elections for the National Assembly and as elected officeholders (as both alternates for those assembly members and titleholders), the article analyzes how various political parties are utilizing these alternate positions. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study finds no evidence that these alternate positions are used to undermine women's political progress.     

Violated Women,Reason, and Lo Político in the Imaginary of the Guatemalan Nation

Guatemalan newspapers are dappled with the spectre of women's violence and the bodily evidence of the military response that is typical for a woman's transgression of gender roles. Gendered representations of violence – so often repeated in the media – engender particular forms of political agency. This article explores how political violence is imagined with women's bodies and suggests that such violence is always built on pre‐existing cultural practices. It argues that gender categorization is paramount to constructing a modern Guatemalan nation that all too often works to exclude women as knowing participants in Lo Político.     

Do the Kurds have ‘no friends but the mountains’? Turkey's Secret War against Communists,Soviets and the Kurds

A Kurdish proverb says that the Kurds have ‘no friends but the mountains’. This was not what the Turkish authorities believed. Using new and previously unexploited archives both in English and Turkish, this article offers a new interpretation of Turkey's perception of the Kurds. By analyzing Kurdish activities and their alignment with Communist movements and Soviet activities, it shows how Turkey's threat perception was shaped by international contexts, especially through the Cold War. In addition, the Kurdish nationalist movement in the Middle East played a pivotal role in regional intelligence cooperation between Turkey, Iraq and Iran. This article argues that Soviet and Communist activities had an important role in shaping Turkey's threat perception of the Kurdish minority in the country. Turkey's perception of subversive threats involved an intertwining of Communists, Soviets and Kurds. This affected the Kurdish bid for independence for most of the twentieth century.     

Explaining Policy Outcomes in Federal Contexts: The Politics of Reproductive Rights in Argentina and Mexico

This article explains the political and institutional factors that affect reproductive rights policies in Argentina and Mexico. Consistent with the comparative literature on gender, politics and institutions, the article reveals that federal arrangements define the arenas in which advocates can challenge governments. The comparative analysis suggests that the content and variations of policy outcomes are not only determined by the legal distribution of such rights. Women's positions towards abortion and contraception was greatly shaped by partisanship and ideology, and this was critical to legislative outcomes, while the number of women legislators was only important to introduce the issues. Important for further research are the effects of institutional and party instability on women's organising in legislatures, and the relevance of links between women's groups outside legislature and political parties for the success of gender equality policies.     

Oil and intra-state conflict in Iraq and Syria: sub-state actors and challenges for Turkey's energy security

The continuing dependency on fossil fuels of the Middle East not only in Turkey's energy mix but also in world energy demand requires further analysis of oil and conflict in the region since the fall of Mosul in Iraq to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in June 2014. This article addresses the relationship between oil and conflict. Then, it examines the case of Turkey's increasing energy relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government to elucidate the implications of inter-state and intra-state conflict on regional interdependence in the region. The argument asserts that risks of an abrupt regime change or revolutionary regime formation in the aftermath of civil war in Syria and ethnic or sectarian violence in Iraq, which are highly associated with intra-state conflicts, present challenges for Turkey's energy security and most importantly for human security in the region.     

Bridging the gender gap

Abstract

While the World Bank has publicly proclaimed that women's participation in development is “essential” not only for achieving social justice but also for reducing poverty, a confidential report by its own staff paints a grim picture of the Bank's history of failing to integrate gender concerns into its lending programs.     

Whose Development? How Women Living Near the Yanacocha Mine,Peru, Envision Potential Futures

Among women opposing expansion of mining operations in Cajamarca, Peru, narratives of preferred alternatives diverge: from sustainable mining to alternative economic development, to more radical alternatives to ‘development’. In these accounts, both the women's relative powerlessness and agency become apparent. This article critically explores women's views of development and their imaginings of their region with or without mining. I argue that those who opposed mining show a continuing engagement with questions of development in the aftermath of conflict over natural resource extraction, highlighting a common thread of desires for bottom-up initiatives embracing local knowledge, practice and history.