Womens Studies International Forum最新文献

The 1951 Refugee Convention represents the legal cornerstone of today’s global refugee protection, which is supposed to apply to all refugees regardless of their origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation. But did the Convention’s drafters have such a complex approach in mind? This paper analyzes the Convention’s drafting at the United Nations and the final conference in the late 1940s and early 1950s from feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives. By drawing on subalternity and absence, and using interpretive analysis of historical sources, the paper focuses on politics—who was (not) involved in debates—and policy—who was (not) considered under the refugee definition. The analysis reveals pervasive asymmetries, with western androcentrism inherently shaping the drafting. The western, white, heterosexual man was the standard filter for the powerful decision-maker and the protection subject, whereas women, LGBTQ+ and colonized people were neglected in politics and policy. Their exclusion was not merely a side effect of the political landscape at the time but reflects the reproduction of western androcentric power, which ultimately invisibilized the subaltern Others in the creation of international refugee law.

This article explores the lived experiences of nine women scholars who are single, childfree and internationally mobile. Mobilising Laurent Berlant's work on ambivalence and ‘cruel optimism,’ we show how experiences of singlehood and academic international mobility are never only good or bad, but always both at the same time. Ambivalence emerges in the women's experiences because singlehood can facilitate academic careers by enabling high productivity and mobility, whereas mobility can inhibit finding committed relationships through an absence of stability and prevalent gendered expectations of women in heterosexual relationships. Most of the interviewed women hope for a life which has both careers, mobility and romantic relationships, however, the simultaneity of benefits and struggles associated with singlehood and a mobile academic life places them in an ambivalent situation that precludes the option of letting go of either of their affective attachments, namely, to gendered couple norms and the academic institution.

Gendered ideas of Muslims and Islam are one of the central organising principles of anti-Muslim racism. However, discussions around gendered anti-Muslim racism often ignore ‘Muslim men’ as a gendered category despite ideas about ‘Muslim women’ being constructed in direct relation to (often implicitly assumed presence of) their male counterparts. As problematised by Alimahomed-Wilson (2020), historical anti-Muslim racist representations of Muslim men as violent and oppressive have not been often considered in these gendered perspectives, but instead treated as a ‘gender-neutral’ facet of anti-Muslim racism. Developing on previous works, our research findings highlight that anti-Muslim racism is inherently gendered, not only because women are disproportionately targeted in Islamophobic attacks but because of its gendered essence. Informed by feminist scholars, our understanding of gender is a relational matrix between men and women upon which we elaborate this gendered foundation of anti-Muslim racism. Anti-Muslim racist ideologies are premised on myths and stereotypical ideas which claim that: 1) Islam is an inherently misogynistic religion; 2) ‘Muslim men’ are therefore inherently violent and oppressive, primarily towards Muslim women, but also backwards and unable to govern themselves or their communities and, as such, are in need of correction or control (Abu-Lughod, 2013; Farris, 2017; Kumar, 2012; inter alia). In this article, building on the previous analyses of the gendered aspect of anti-Muslim racism and our research findings based on fieldwork with Muslim communities in Ireland (n = 193), we argue that anti-Muslim racism is gendered not only because it affects women more, but also because: 1) its underlying gendered racial ideology constructs Muslim women as the passive Other of assumed ‘violent Muslim masculinity’; 2) ‘Western liberal’ anti-Muslim discourses, claiming to be vying for the liberation of all women, assume it as their ‘duty’ to save ‘Muslim women’; 3) with ‘white feminism’ often providing the moral ground for this saviour image, ignoring Muslim women's emancipatory agency and politics.

Queer and feminist research centralises issues of power and relationalities; methodologies frequently emphasise the process of conducting research with people who are marginalised. The queer and feminist methodological literature also opens a door to complicating binary understandings of “right”/ “wrong” “powerful”/ “disempowered” relations, including those between the researcher and her research subjects. The “wrong” people are those who do not conform with expectations of typical queer and feminist research participants.

In this paper, we introduce interviews conducted in Ireland with people who held concerns or oppositions to socio-legal changes in favour of increased rights related to gender, sexualities and/or abortion. We explore three moments in which Carol, author 1 for this article, did not contradict statements with which she disagreed. Building on queer and feminist insights for research that listens quietly with curiosity, we argue in favour of methodological approaches that move past considerations of complicity and platforming, to explore what discomfort can tell us about the interplay between research encounters and dynamic contexts.

The use of similes in the construction of women and men characters in a literary text has been a neglected area of research. Drawing on the assumption from attitude theory as proposed by Rosenberg and Hovland, and Fishbein Ajzen, the present study investigates the use of similes in Shamsur Rehman Faruqi's novel The Mirror of Beauty (TMOB) to determine the attitude of a male novelist towards gender depiction. The one novel corpus, TMOB, was run into AntConc to collect the required data utilizing the node words ‘like a’, ‘like an’, ‘like the’, ‘as*as’, ‘as a *’, and ‘like that of a/an/the’. The lists of similes based on the source domain were generated and then tabulated gender wise to evaluate in relation to their function and meaning with the help of concordance program. The study has found a total number of 112 similes with 6 source domains: flora (30), fauna (18), astronomical objects (08), inanimate objects (33), supernatural/royal characters (09) and human characters (14). Out of collected 112 similes, 71 (63 %) similes are used to represent women while 41(37 %) are used for men. The analysis based on functional features of these similes show that women are described through 8 ideologies while the similes for men describe them through 12 constructed ideologies. The findings indicate that the author is biased in his gender representation where he represents his men characters more positively as compared to his women characters. Male characters are described as handsome, spiritual, delightful brave, intelligent, kind, well learned, hardworking, powerful and strong while female ones are portrayed as physically beautiful, seductive and delicate creatures but with negative personality traits.

This study evaluates the extent of leisure time loss experienced by middle-aged women in South Korea who care for their aging parents and quantifies the monetary value of this lost leisure time. By employing an open-ended direct question, we derived respondents' willingness to pay and willingness to accept compensation for leisure time lost due to caregiving duties. Our findings reveal that middle-aged women engaged in regular caregiving are willing to pay an average of 9313 KRW (US$7.74) per hour for leisure time and would require 13,539 KRW (US$11.40) per hour as compensation for their lost leisure. The annual total monetary value of leisure time loss for consistent caregivers was estimated to range between 7403.4 billion KRW (US$6232 million) and 10,127.5 billion KRW (US$8525 million). The study highlights the significant challenges faced by caregivers, particularly middle-aged women, emphasizing the need for social awareness and discussions on gender role distribution to promote gender equality. It underscores the importance of developing effective support policies, including financial compensation and mental health resources, to alleviate caregivers' dual burden of work and home responsibilities. Understanding the economic impact of leisure time loss can help address long-term socioeconomic issues associated with an aging society, crucial for improving the efficiency and sustainability of care services for the older generation. The economic value estimated in this study will provide essential information for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of public services, supporting the economic feasibility of policies and programs, especially because respite services involve significant government expenditure.

Language textbooks often include visual elements such as images that contribute significantly to the construction of gender ideologies which play a crucial role in shaping the worldview of language learners towards gender. While prior critically oriented studies on gender have contributed to our understanding of discourses that reproduce gender bias in the textual content of English language textbooks (ELT), there has been limited attention to multimodal features in the depiction of gender. Adopting van Leeuwen's socio-semantic inventory, the current study aims to contribute to this niche area by conducting a multimodal examination of gender portrayal in secondary-level English textbooks used across four provinces of Pakistan. Our findings indicate that both text and images contribute to the asymmetrical portrayal of gender within professional, recreational, and domestic spaces. These results underscore the need for a critical review of the textbooks by Pakistani ELT educational authorities in promoting a more balanced and equitable representation of gender in classroom materials.

This article attempts to explore the intricate workings of gender dynamics in Badriyah Al-Bishr's Hend wa alʿaskar (2006). It investigates how the author challenges traditional gender norms through the representation of female characters who strive for liberation. Al-Bishr lays bare the complexities of gender roles within the Saudi Arabian context. Viewed from the lens of narrative perspective, her text reveals the silenced tales of women on the quest for agency and identity. Through vivid storytelling and rich character narrativization that builds on the stream of consciousness, flashback, anticipation, and disruptive temporality, Al-Bishr crafts a compelling narrative of women's revelations within a patriarchal setting. Drawing on cultural discourse analysis, and feminist social epistemology, the reading of Hend wa alʿaskar attempts to offer a nuanced exploration of how gender, power, and resistance intersect and coalesce together to produce a thought-provoking narrative about the contemporary Saudi Arabian context. The complexities of women's tales intricately weave an ambivalent knot of discourses within the narrative, enriching its depth and challenging conventional interpretations.