Concepts of citizenship underlying EU gender equality policies

This article assesses the framing of gender equality in the EU political discourse from 1995 to 2005 and the conceptualisations of citizenship that emerge from it. To assess the extent to which EU gender equality policies meet the aspirations of the concept of a gender equal citizenship, it develops an analysis of how different feminist approaches to citizenship are related to concepts of rights and responsibilities in EU gender equality policies. The frame analysis of a selection of EU policy documents in the areas of family policies, domestic violence, and gender inequality in politics reflects different configurations of the relation between feminist conceptualisations of citizenship and citizens' distribution of rights and responsibilities. Findings show that both gender-neutral and gender-differentiated conceptualisations of citizenship are present in EU policy documents, while a gender-pluralist approach tends to be absent. They also reveal that, while both men and women are formally treated as right-holders, women are framed as mainly responsible for eradicating the barriers to an equal enjoyment of citizenship rights. Moreover, men and women are constructed as different citizens. The article concludes that EU formal definitions of citizenship based on the concept of equality, while promoting legal gender equality and acknowledging the existence of gender obstacles to the enjoyment of an equal citizenship for women, are not by definition translated into policy initiatives transformative of traditional gender roles. In this respect they could hamper the achievement of a gender equal citizenship in the European Union.     

Hunger strikes,detainee protest,and the relationality of political subjectivization

This paper attends to the relationships and spatialities through which immigration detention centers, though isolating and constraining spaces, are shaped by detainees. I approach the problematic of detainee resistance and agency through both Critical Citizenship Studies and feminist relational frameworks. I do so through a case study of one particular rupture – the 2014 hunger strikes at the Northwest Detention Center. My analysis of the 2014 hunger strikes at the NWDC directs me to conceptualize detainee activism as a process of political subjectivization, though one that is fraught with physical and political risk to both detainees and the order of sovereignty and citizenship. This process is undergirded by and productive of a series of interpersonal and political relations that mediate detainee actions and statements, and constitute them as a rupture in the order of sovereignty and citizenship.     

A “Quick and Dirty” Approach to Women’s Emancipation and Human Rights?<Superscript>1</Superscript>

During the past decade, women’s and human rights ‘language’ has moved from the margins to the ‘mainstream’ of international law and politics. In this paper, the author argues that while feminists and human rights activists criticise the ‘mainstream’s interpretation of women’s and human rights, ‘we’ do not question what becoming part of the mainstream and the cosmopolitan classes has meant for us. Drawing on examples of how women’s and human rights arguments have been used in the post-conflict state-building process in Afghanistan, the author attempts to show how international women’s rights and human rights advocacy campaigns planned by well-meaning humanitarians in Western capitals can backfire when implemented in politically complex environments. Dr. Sari Kouvo is a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is also affiliated with the Center for Global Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg. Dr. Kouvo has several years experience of working with human rights and gender issues in Afghanistan. The opinions expressed in this article are her own and do not represent opinions of the organisations she has worked for or is working with.     

Feminist legal theory and practice: rethinking the relationship

This article aims to contribute to the question of how to conceptualise the relationship between theory and practice in feminist scholarship in law. It looks in detail at the implications of different issues raised in a recent debate between Anne Bottomley and Ngaire Naffine on the existence of a “legal feminist orthodoxy”. I critique the dominance of ethics over politics and join Bottomley in her attack upon “the ethics of respect for the other”, albeit from a different position. I then look at the ways in which the problem of “essentialism” is being rethought from a feminist perspective.     

FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE: KEEPING THE SUBJECT ALIVE

One of the main purposes of feminist jurisprudence is to create or find better ways of being and living for women through the analysis, critique, and use of law. Rich work has emerged, and continues to emerge, from feminist theorists exploring conceptions of the self, personhood, identity and subjectivity that could be used to form a basic unit in law and politics. In this article, it is argued that a strong sense of human subjectivity needs to be retained to enable the human potentiality of women and men to flourish. This can be done in a way which is not essentialist, yet does not dissolve the subject out of existence, issues pertinent to feminist jurisprudence in recent years.     

Gender,risk and the Wall Street Alpha Male

From the outset, analyses of the 2008 financial crisis, in mainstream as well as feminist discussions, have been gendered. In particular, rampant risk taking in an unregulated environment, widely deemed to be a principle cause of the crash, has been associated with masculine characteristics. In this article, I explore how the concepts of gender and risk entwine in two films on the financial crisis – The Other Guys and Margin Call. By looking at how gender is used to dramatise financial risk, I explore how understandings of high-risk behaviour are gendered, and the implications this has in the context of finance. Fictional representations mediate public understanding of this notoriously complex field as the number of films and documentaries on the crisis demonstrates. Exploring how gender is used to communicate risk reminds us that risk taking is part of a performance of masculinity that needs to be established by constructing a feminine, risk-averse other. The contention of this paper is that, to address gender bias in finance and the economy, gendered meanings of risk need to be openly challenged, and cultural and material analyses of gendered inequality brought into dialogue.     

Women's fear of violent crime: An exploratory test of a feminist hypothesis

Government-sponsored national victimization surveys in several countries have found consistently that women's fear of violent crime is much greater than their actual chances of being violently victimized. Not suprisingly, most attempts to account for this discrepancy begin with the assumption that women's fear is subjectively based. A few feminist theorists, however, have challenged this view. They argue that women's fear of violent crime is much more objective than the crime surveys indicate. Women's fear results in part, they suggest, from being physically abused by a husband, boyfriend, or other male intimate; an experience largely untouched in the crime surveys. Such abuse creates a generalized fear of male violence, which has shown up in the victimization surveys as fear of violent crime in public places. This study tested, and found some support for, the feminist hypothesis, using data from a telephone survey of a representative sample of 315 Toronto women.     

Juvenile Female Arrests

Abstract

This paper elaborates on feminist theory using Emerson's (1983) notion of holistic effects. We propose that the processing of juvenile female status offenders may vary systematically with the level of sex crimes in a community. This hypothesis is tested using a time series analysis of monthly status arrests in a Midwestern city. Our models indicate a significant increase in female status arrests at one “intervention” point, but no changes were found for male status arrest levels. We conclude that heterogeneity of processing of female offenders within single jurisdictions is an important avenue for future theoretical and empirical exploration.     

Gender inequality and homicide: a cross-national examination

Studies examining gender inequality and crime have often explored the connection between female victimisation and crime. However, feminist theories do provide a rationale for gender inequality affecting all crime, not just female victimisation. Using the ameliorative and the backlash hypothesis the current analysis examined gender inequality and homicide in 94 countries. Using a gender inequality index, we found that as gender inequality increased the homicide rate increased. This finding supports the ameliorative hypothesis, which states that as societies become more equal crime will decrease.     

Broken Hearts and Battered Lives: Adverse and Abusive Life Histories and Externalized Responses to Anger as Pathways to Illicit Drug Use Among Incarcerated Women

Most incarcerated women suffer from adverse and abusive life histories, including adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as sexual, physical, emotional abuse, and neglect, and intimate partner violence (IPV). In addition, many have difficulties regulating their anger expression and most participate in illicit drug use. Although many have offered explanations for these relationships, the current study is among the first to utilize an integrated feminist pathways and general strain theory (GST) approach to explain them. Using data from a stratified random sample of all incarcerated women in Oklahoma (N?=?441), we explore the linkages between ACEs, IPV, the externalized expression of anger, and heavy illicit drug use. Our findings indicate that childhood physical and sexual abuse are significantly associated with externalized responses to anger. However, the effects of childhood adversities, particularly sexual abuse, on heavy illicit drug use are mediated by externalized responses to anger suggesting that anger plays a significant role in women’s pathways to illicit drug use. In contrast, and somewhat surprisingly, being a victim of IPV was negatively related to externalized responses to anger and not significantly related to illicit drug use. Implications for the importance of utilizing an integrated feminist pathways and GST approach in future research are offered.