Showing papers in "European Journal of Women's Studies in 2006"

Intersectionality and Feminist Politics

Abstract: This article explores various analytical issues involved in conceptualizing the interrelationships of gender, class, race and ethnicity and other social divisions. It compares the debate on these issues that took place in Britain in the 1980s and around the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. It examines issues such as the relative helpfulness of additive or mutually constitutive models of intersectional social divisions; the different analytical levels at which social divisions need to be studied, their ontological base and their relations to each other. The final section of the article attempts critically to assess a specific intersectional methodological approach for engaging in aid and human rights work in the South.

Multiple Inequalities, Intersectionality and the European Union:

Abstract: The European Union (EU), a pioneer in gender equality policies, is moving from predominantly attending to gender inequality, towards policies that address multiple inequalities. This article argues that there are tendencies at EU level to assume an unquestioned similarity of inequalities, to fail to address the structural level and to fuel the political competition between inequalities. Based upon a comparison of specific sets of inequalities (class, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender), this article explores where and how structural and political intersectionality might be relevant. It argues that a ‘one size fits all' approach to addressing multiple discrimination is based on an incorrect assumption of sameness or equivalence of the social categories connected to inequalities and of the mechanisms and processes that constitute them. Focusing on similarities ignores the differentiated character and dynamics of inequalities. It also overlooks the political dimension of equality goals. Moreover, it has become clear that attention to structural mechanisms and to the role of the state and the private sphere in reproducing inequalities is much needed. The final part of the article presents constructive ideas for a more comprehensive way of addressing multiple inequalities.

Narrative Accounts of Origins A Blind Spot in the Intersectional Approach

Abstract: This article uses a study of the life-story narratives of former classmates of Dutch and Moluccan descent to argue that the constructionist approach to intersectionality, with its account of identity as a narrative construction rather than a practice of naming, offers better tools for answering questions concerning intersectional identity formation than a more systemic intersectional approach. The case study also highlights the importance of the quest for origins in narratives. It demonstrates that theories of intersectionality are not justified in subsuming the issue of belonging under the identity marker of ethnicity, when all identities are performatively produced in and through narrative enactments that include the precarious achievement of belonging. The case study demonstrates that if narrative accounts of a (singular or collective) life fail to achieve narrative closure regarding roots, attempts to trace routes are seriously hampered.

Differences Between Women? Intersecting Voices in a Female Narrative

Abstract: The ‘intersectionality’ approach in feminist theory postulates that differences between women, such as age, ethnicity, class, nationality, sexuality, etc. do intersect. However, intersectionality starts to get blurred when examined concretely because the list of differences is always endless. There is frequently silence about concrete questions such as: who defines when, where and which of these differences are rendered important in particular conceptions, and which are not? This article examines how categories of difference and identity interplay and intersect by analysing a narrative life-interview with a female migrant to Vienna. It aims to make visible some of her specific identifications and differentiations and how these are located in time and space, by focusing on her self-presentation and the categories of difference such as gender, class and ethnicity that she introduces. Through this the article aims to contribute to discussions of the dynamism of subjectivities and power relations.

Headscarves and Porno-Chic: Disciplining Girls' Bodies in the European Multicultural Society

Abstract: This article addresses girls' dress, which has become controversial, especially in contemporary multicultural Europe. Using the Dutch public debate about the headscarf, belly shirts, visible G-strings, and other forms of ‘porno-chic’, the authors show that these seemingly separate debates are held together by the regulation of female sexuality. Through their analysis of the headscarves and porno-chic debate, the authors argue that women's sexuality and girls' bodies in particular have become the metonymic location for many a contemporary social dilemma: of the multicultural society when it concerns the scarf, of feminism and public morality when it concerns porno-chic. They conclude that despite the widely different appearance of girls wearing headscarves or porno-chic, both groups of girls are submitted to the meta-narratives of dominant discourse: the state, school, public opinion, parents and other social institutions ‘resignify’ their everyday practices as inappropriate, and reprieve them from the pow...

Gender Mainstreaming in the EU Incorporating a Feminist Reading

Abstract: This article explores the extent to which a feminist reading of gender mainstreaming is incorporated in the EU political discourse by analysing how family policy and gender inequality in politics a...

‘I Am the Ultimate Challenge’: Accounts of Intersectionality in the Life-Story of a Well-Known Daughter of Moroccan Migrant Workers in the Netherlands

Abstract: This article aims to demonstrate that the concept of the 'dialogical self' is an identity theory that provides useful tools for studying intersectionality. In terms of the dialogical self, the formation of identity is a process of orchestrating voices within the self that speak from different I-positions. Such voices are embedded in field-specific repertoires of practices, characters, discourses and power relations specific to the various groups to which individuals simultaneously belong. By telling one's life-story, the individual intones these voices and combines them in new ways, thus reshaping them as they use them. The article applies the theoretical concept of the dialogical self to the analysis of the life-story of a relatively well-known female Dutch politician of Moroccan background whose explanation of why she wears a headscarf allows her to combine the religious and political voices in her story with her more hesitant female voice. The words, images and self-evaluations used in her self-narratives demonstrate the ways in which her religious, ethnic and gender identifications are formed and are in dialogue.

Towards Transnational Feminisms: Some Reflections and Concerns in Relation to the Globalization of Reproductive Technologies

Abstract: This article discusses the emergence of the concept of ‘transnational feminisms’ as a differentiated notion from ‘global sisterhood’ within feminist postcolonial criticism. This is done in order to...

The Social Construction of Space and Gender

Abstract: Over the past 10 years two concepts of central significance in the social sciences have come up for rediscussion: ‘space’ and ‘gender’. Today the two concepts are seen as relational, as a productio...

Intersectionality: A Challenge for Feminist HIV/AIDS Research?

Abstract: The aim of this article is to engage critically with feminist HIV/AIDS research from an ‘intersectional’ perspective. Focusing in particular on the work of Tamsin Wilton (1997) and Janet Holland et ...

The Complicated Relationship between Sex, Gender and the Substantive Representation of Women:

Abstract: Simply counting the numbers of women present in politics is an inadequate basis for theorizing the difference they might make. Drawing on research on British MPs (interviews with Labour women MPs first elected in 1997, analysis of Labour MPs' voting behaviour and signing of early day motions in the 1997 parliament, and MPs' participation in parliamentary debates accompanying the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act), this article shows how insights gained from empirical research can inform and improve our theorizing. It suggests that the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation is better conceived as complicated rather than straightforward.

Imaginaries of Europe Technologies of Gender, Economies of Power

Abstract: This article explores some of the ways in which ideas about and attempts to construct a European identity and sense of belonging inscribe an imaginary of Europe that is exclusionary and elitist. It suggests that the symbolic figure of ‘the immigrant woman’ is a container category that simultaneously signifies the non-European and tests and destabilizes claims to Europe's essential characteristics. It also argues that traces of this imaginary of Europe can be found in feminist scholarship on global care chains and that the spatial category of ‘the domestic’ is the invisible seam that ties this scholarship to the hegemonic imaginary of Europe.

Ready for Bologna? The Impact of the Declaration on Women’s and Gender Studies in the UK:

Abstract: This article explores the likely impact that the Bologna Declaration (1999) will have on the field of women’s and gender studies in the UK. While the UK higher education sector as a whole has been slow to take up the opportunities and challenges presented by Bologna, this article argues that women’s and gender studies may gain particularly from a European reorientation. Women’s and gender studies currently has to struggle for both national resources and recognition, and so has little to lose and much to gain from actively engaging in the process of Europeanization of degrees. The author advocates for UK women’s and gender studies practitioners to take a leading role in this process, in order to facilitate the potential benefits for the field.

The Veiled Muslim, the Anorexic and the Transsexual: What Do They Have in Common?

Abstract: The Muslim woman wearing the veil, the female anorexic and the from-male-to-female transsexual constitute three different figures that, despite their striking differences, have a common symbolic ground. By focusing on the similarity between the veiled woman and the other two figures, the article sheds a different light on the debate about the Muslim veil in western societies. It is argued that the western notion of woman is based on a structural ambivalence of transcendence and immanence. On the one hand, woman is expected to be liberated, in control and active in public life and in all ways just as free as the man, on the other she represents a deficiency compared to the man; it is expected of her that she takes up a complementary, subordinate position in relation to the man. The subordinate position, however, is seldom pronounced. Officially, the gender hierarchy is not a part of egalitarian societies, that is, the modern configuration that formally rejects a hierarchical worldview. Is this the reason w...

Problematic Woman-to-Woman Family Relations

Abstract: Family research has mostly concentrated on relationships between parents and children or between women and men. On the other hand, feminist studies have explained problems within woman-to-woman relationships deriving from patriarchy. This article focuses on problematic adult woman-to-woman family relationships. More specifically, it discusses two women's ambivalent emotions narrated and experienced in their problematic female family relationships. The authors suggest that feminist studies should take into account culturally dominant narratives interlinking female subjectivity and responsibility over the private sphere. Ambivalence arises in situations where individuals encounter contradictorily structured power hierarchies, i.e. simultaneously trying to follow the (traditional) rules of kinship order and the desire for agency.

Love Poetry, Women's Bonding and Feminist Consciousness: The Complex Interaction between Edna St Vincent Millay and Adrienne Rich

Abstract: This article examines Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems in relation to Edna St Vincent Millay’s Fatal Interview. Discussing notions such as lyric voice and innovation within traditional genres, the author analyses how Millay’s attempts to challenge commonplace definitions of female sexuality impacted on Rich’s articulation of sexual desire. The intertextual dialogue between the above works reveals that Millay and Rich produced two remarkably similar erotic narratives, which resist masculinist conceptions of literary history and comment on the self-referentiality of poetic composition. Finally, the author approaches Fatal Interview as a work that foregrounds the significance of women’s bonding, and argues that it was precisely this aspect that caught Rich’s attention and helped the younger poet develop her feminist consciousness.

Experience, Subjectivity and Politics in the Italian Feminist Movement: Redefining the Boundaries between Body and Discourse

Abstract: This article describes the political practices of a part of the Italian women’s movement that, as of the 1980s, gave way to the sexual difference thought. Through a political analysis of their own experience, which removed any humanist identity assumptions, the women’s movement generated new practices and discourses. With these, women were able to exert self-criticism, and simultaneously to produce new subjectivities articulated around the sexual difference concept. The difference thought helped highlight the limits of institutional policy, renewing the premises of political analysis and redefining the borders of what was deemed to be ‘political’. Intended to foster dialogue with other feminist proposals, the article underlines the situated nature of this political experience and focuses on the method, the political praxis and the process rather than the outcome, the conclusions or the theory.

Reading Human Sex

Abstract: This article charts the feminist perspectives that have come out of the author’s thinking on the dance performance text Human Sex and how this has informed her own feminism. In doing so, the author argues that a feminist agenda is shifting and dynamic but also reliant upon prior readings and interpretations that provide the point of reference for a departure to other readings and perspectives. Using autobiographical material, the author highlights the importance of considering the personal histories of subject-hood that influence a feminist consciousness and how these are the condition of possibility for making other readings. To demonstrate the shifting character of identity over time, she engages in different readings of Human Sex through the work of feminist theorists Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler and Peggy Phelan.

Book Review: What is Making Class?

Abstract: Class, Self, Culture was published in 2004, but is less known than most of Beverley Skeggs’s work. One reason for this is perhaps that the whole project she is developing is intimidating. Skeggs tries to build a complete analysis of how class is constructed through the history of classifications, academic perspectives, political rhetoric and popular representation. Much of this is a continuation of Skeggs’s book Formations of Class and Gender from 1997. That book was built on ethnography among young northern UK working-class girls, and theoretically Class, Self, Culture continues where Formations left off. More than writing about something completely new, for example based on new empirical research, Skeggs brings together debates from different areas and contributions from different authors. The book contributes to answering several questions, which in themselves are academic fields: the existence of class in contemporary societies, the relationship between the economic and the cultural, the relationship between class and other classifications, such as gender and race, idealism in feminist epistemologies and many more. The text is so dense I am sure Skeggs could have written books on each and every one of these, but instead she aims at bringing it all together in 226 pages. Skeggs rightfully claims that: ‘As a concept, class is, therefore, being used to do many things: provide academic legitimacy, frame an academic discipline, speak to “the people”, measure social change, stand in for the social itself’ (p. 41). That is a lot of needs and concerns put into one concept, and needless to say, the term cannot always perform well – especially since it is the most defined subject in sociology at the same time as being poorly defined. Class is everything and nothing. It is therefore an important and brave task Skeggs takes on when she refuses to take the easy way out by concentrating only on a small part of the whole. As a difficult endeavour, it is of course not easily pulled off or accessed. It is a highly technical book at times, and it is not an appropriate introductory book, but rather a text for scholars already interested in the making of class. I hope this does not discourage those in most need of the book: scholars who don’t recognize the value of the concept of class in contemporary society and scholars who make use of it in a commonsensical way, making it do everything. Of course, these are not easy issues, and I don’t mind that in itself, but I do believe the argument could be

Book Review: Gender, Ethnicity and Positioning in Processes of Subjectification:

Abstract: NOVA (Norwegian Institute for Research on Adolescence - Welfare and Ageing)--> - (Seeberg, Marie Louise)

Book Review: Behind the Mask: Black Hybrid Identities

Abstract: Nutzungsbedingungen: Dieser Text wird unter dem \"PEER Licence Agreement zur Verfügung\" gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zum PEER-Projekt finden Sie hier: http://www.peerproject.eu Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an. Terms of use: This document is made available under the \"PEER Licence Agreement \". For more Information regarding the PEER-project see: http://www.peerproject.eu This document is solely intended for your personal, non-commercial use.All of the copies of this documents must retain all copyright information and other information regarding legal protection. You are not allowed to alter this document in any way, to copy it for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the document in public, to perform, distribute or otherwise use the document in public. By using this particular document, you accept the above-stated conditions of use.