Gender,ethnicity and feminism: an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences feminist academic women in UK higher education

Studies have begun to explore how those women academics committed to social justice, namely feminist academics, are navigating the increasingly managerial Academy. To understand how these multiple social identities, including gender and ethnicity, interact and intersect, this paper adopts an intersectional approach to understanding the heterogeneity of women’s experiences in academia. Five focus groups with feminist academics (n = 6–10 in each focus group) reveal concerns of hampered career progression as a consequence of being female and openly feminist. Some ethnic minority academics felt that they were forced to choose between a feminist identity or that of their ethnic background. For some women, their feminist identity provided opportunities for challenging dominant practices. The paper concludes that the heterogeneity of feminist academics’ experiences within academia is under-researched and that the lens of intersectionality helps to illuminate this. This paper advances understanding of multiple identities at work, though demonstrating that intersectionality can lead to the accumulation of advantage as well as disadvantage in relation to social identities such as gender and ethnicity, and a political identity such as feminist.     

Just Use What You Have: Ethical Fashion Discourse and the Feminisation of Responsibility

ABSTRACT

The rise of fast fashion has meant that young women (even those on relatively low incomes) are able to ‘regularly consume and discard fashionable clothing’ [Buckley, Cheryl, and Hazel Clark. 2012. “Conceptualizing Fashion in Everyday Lives.” Design Issues 28 (4): 18–28. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00172., 21]. While this development may be aligned with the democratisation of fashion—the fact that the supply chains that deliver fast fashion are not consistent with the principles of global democracy is now also relatively common knowledge in the democratised West. This, along with growing awareness of the ecological harms associated with the fashion industry has contributed to what Elke Gaugele [2014. Aesthetic Politics in Fashion. Vienna: Sternberg Press] has termed the ‘ethical turn’ in fashion. However, despite the fact that young women are often not deemed capable of translating their (ethical) attitudes into (ethical) behaviours [McNeill, Lisa, and Rebecca Moore. 2015. “Sustainable Fashion Consumption and the Fast Fashion Conundrum: Fashionable Consumers and Attitudes to Sustainability in Clothing Choice.” International Journal of Consumer Studies 39 (3): 212–222], nor able to be ‘trusted to consistently make good decisions’ [Brooks, Andrew. 2015. Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes. London: Zed Books, 241], they are also increasingly being called to recognise their individual role in the politics of global fashion supply chains. Drawing on examples from scholarly and popular discourses as well as online peer to peer communications, this article explores the historical moment of fast fashion as an instance of both the feminisation of consumption and the feminisation of responsibility.     

‘I Want to Wear It’: Fashioning Black Feminism in Mahogany (1975)

ABSTRACT

In this article I focus on the portrayal of fashionable clothing in the 1975 film Mahogany and connect it to the history of African American women engaging with sartorial self-representation as a means to assert their visibility in American culture. My aim is to analyse Mahogany’s emphasis on brightly-coloured highly-ornamented clothing, which has a long history of signifying bad taste and became part of accusations of racial and sexual inferiority. I want to show how Mahogany’s representation of fashion undermines the historically entrenched bias against colourful, highly adorned clothing while also revealing how this bias has played a subtle but significant role in the racism and sexism black women have encountered, further (but not finally) impeding them from the forms of recognition the category of femininity offers. Mahogany represents those impediments and repeats the sexual and racial commodification underlying them, but also resists them (albeit quite subtly) through the film’s loving display of fashion and its attention to the work of designing and making clothes. Mahogany tells a story of bright sartorial resistance that can be understood as an articulation of black feminist desires for women of colour to be able to compose the images through which their bodies are perceived.     

Augusta Webster’s Mother and Daughter and the only child debate

The enduring debate about family size has roots in Victorian England, most notably in literary works addressing the issue of balancing motherhood and a writing career. One Victorian writer and activist, Augusta Webster (1837–1894), directly addressed the issue of family size in her uncompleted sonnet sequence Mother and Daughter (1895), which she began when her only child was a newborn. In this posthumous series of 14-line poems, Webster defends her decision to have one child and, in doing so, challenges popular assumptions that only women with multiple children could be considered ‘complete’, socially-acceptable mothers. Despite her efforts, however, and despite the rising popularity of one-child families, the results of numerous scientific studies and the lingering critiques of mommy blogs make it clear that challenges to mothers of ‘onlies’ remain.     

The feminine in abstract painting reconsidered

This essay explores the complex gender issues embedded in abstract painting’s history as well as the present.     

Elusive Women Authors in Norwegian Nineteenth-Century Reading Societies

Abstract

Which women authors were read at the ebb of the nineteenth century and around the start of the twentieth? Research on historical readership groups reveals a strikingly different picture from the one transmitted through literary histories and textbooks. Empirical data from the catalogues of Norwegian reading societies from this period form the basis of the proposed conclusions. From a feminist, scholarly point of view, it is doubly interesting to investigate the fate of female authors among female readers; hence, the main emphasis is on the book collection of the women’s reading society based in Oslo from 1874. The collections of other societies, whether male or open to both sexes, are consulted for comparison. Although the material is Norwegian, the results turn out to be comparable to those seen in other countries, not least Finland. The data presented here serve to modify the received canon of European literary history, and to invite future revisions in the reception of female authorship and of women’s place in world literature.     

This is your afterlife: gender,slavery, and televisual subjection

In 1957 Arries Ann Ward, who was formerly enslaved, appeared on the classic television interview-entertainment program, This Is Your Life. Despite Ward’s practices of refusal, the rare interview enacts an idealization of black female servitude and indebted obligation through performances of affection and racial benevolence. Ward’s appearance effectively works to resolve national crisis produced by widespread images of civil-rights protest and counterinsurgent violence, reifying discourses of American exceptionalism in Cold War context.     

Living and working as a domestic worker in the Middle East: the experience of migrant returnees in Girana town,North Wollo,Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the migration experiences of Ethiopian migrant returnees from domestic work in the Gulf countries and Lebanon. The returnees reside in the town of Girana located in Habru sub-district, North Wollo zone of Amhara region. There is much female work migration to the Arab Middle East from the town, particularly to Saudi Arabia through Muslim pilgrimage. Employing a qualitative method, the study examines how the returnee women perceived and experienced labour migration and analyzes the impacts of labour migration on childcare, family survival back home, and debt payment. The returnees made voluntary regular and irregular labour migration to the region and engaged in domestic work, which is not preferred by the host society. However, domestic work is unregulated by the labour policy of the destination countries. This made the returnees’ employment situation rather exploitative, exacerbating their vulnerability to abuses, ethnic denigration, and undermining of cultural identity.     

The return migration experiences of Ethiopian women trafficked to Bahrain: ‘ … for richer or poorer,let me be on the hands of my people … ’

ABSTRACT

This study draws upon the return experiences of Ethiopian women trafficked to the Middle East. Understanding these experiences is critical to informing the design of effective government policy to mitigate obstacles to return and reintegration. This study was conducted in Addis Ababa with five women who were trafficked to Bahrain and later returned to Ethiopia. Action research was used to establish an inquiry group of women in order to produce a viable vision for successful reintegration. Despite initial high hopes, the returnees did not see migration as producing positive returns. All five participants agreed that their experiences in the destination were devastating and thus they were relieved to have returned to their home country. Nonetheless, reintegration was a difficult process for them. In addition to not accumulating enough savings to enable them to reintegrate economically, they all faced misunderstandings and impractical expectations from their families and community. The women suggested that adequate protection from law enforcement, facilitation of income-generating activities, and improved access to rehabilitation and medical services are important elements of successful return and reintegration. Effective return and reintegration policy is needed to ensure that trafficked returnees can become productive citizens in their home country.     

Silenced narratives of women’s participation in labour and political struggle in Spain, 1960–1975

ABSTRACT

This article studies women’s participation in the struggle against the dictatorship in Spain (from 1960 to 1975). Drawing on life stories of women activists from el Marco de Jerez, it examines their repertoires of actions, their frames, and the lack of recognition from both academic and political spheres. A Gramscian approach and the perspective of hegemonic masculinity contribute to explain how women organized, how represented their collective action, and why their memories have been silenced. The theoretical approach has helped to identify relations of hegemony within feminist studies and political movement.