Womens Studies International Forum最新文献

How has the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, overturning the constitutional right to abortion, impacted the country's sex education? Our answer begins by reviewing the status of U.S. sex education, pre-Dobbs: feminist critiques and our survey of young people's perspectives both underscore the inadequacy of risk-focused approaches, the importance of practical information, and the different sex educational issues facing young women vs. young men. We then examine published feminist and student reactions to Dobbs, its negative impact on sex education and potential positive effects. While several states have passed bills against teaching crucial sex- and gender-related topics, these restrictions have intensified feminist critiques, provoking steps to improve access to contraceptives, and providing guidance for home-based sex-educational conversations. And, young people themselves are taking initiative, developing sex education programs addressing their most pressing concerns. We ask: might we be at a pivotal moment in the evolution of U.S. sex education?

Non-profit work plays a vital role in connecting policy and community, as well as providing essential services in Canada. However, evidence suggests that despite being often engaged in equity seeking work, many non-profit organizations remain sites of inequity and marginalization among service provider staff. In this qualitative study, researchers conducted interviews with representatives from 60 organizations across the province of Alberta, Canada. Using intersectionality and thematic analysis, the study identified three key themes across issues related to the feminization of gender-equity seeking work in the third sector. First, economic exploitation, including low pay across the non-profit sector, and pay discrepancies across positions within non-profit work, impact staff in gendered and racialized ways. Second, uneven labour expectations compound exploitation through failures of performative Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), unpaid labour expectations, and gender bias both within and outside of organizational structure. Third, service provider capacities are being restricted through staff mental health challenges and burnout, staff use of the services they provide clients, and challenges with worker retention. Organizations and funders may address these inequities by demanding transparency in promotion policies to ensure women and gender-diverse people, particularly those who are racialized, have fair access to management and leadership positions, as well as by reforming funding structures to encourage more equitable pay.

In Ghana, institutional support for victims of domestic violence is provided by the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), a specialized unit of the Ghana Police Services. We conducted in-depth interviews with 16 women with a history of domestic violence and 10 DOVVSU personnel in Greater Accra, Ashanti, and North regions. The purpose was to document institutional challenges to delivering domestic violence services in Ghana and determine whether these cause further harm to victims and survivors and thus constitute structural violence. Challenges were linked to a lack of investment in developing the infrastructure needed to address inaccessibility to domestic violence services and to create risk mitigation strategies. This is a case of structural violence because further harm is caused when women lack institutional support, including revictimization, unwanted pregnancy, family tensions, abandonment, premature death, unprofessionalism, and ethical distress. The government should provide more resources to address the challenges.

Women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds in Australia may be unlikely to disclose sexual assault, due to the social norms in their home countries. Due to varying degrees of acculturation, Japanese residents of Australia may be influenced by Japanese norms. The Australian government acknowledges that targeted responses may be needed to support CALD women disclose sexual assault, yet research on this area is scarce. This study explores the views of CALD Japanese women living in Australia regarding sexual assault disclosure and the #MeToo and #WeToo movements. A thematic content analysis of interviews with eight CALD Japanese women revealed that their views on sexual assault disclosure were dominated by two opposing themes, Systemic Avoidance and Empowerment through Social Activism, which were informed by the degree to which they upheld Hofstede's individualism, masculinity, and power distance cultural values. Our findings may help policy makers develop culturally nuanced approaches to encourage the disclosure of sexual violence.

Female genital cutting (FGC) in Indonesia is still prevalent, and it is increasingly prevalent in urban than in rural areas. This study analyzed the prevalence of FGC in Indonesia and the urbanization and medicalization of FGC practices. Specifically, it addresses the critical questions of how urbanization affects the prevalence of FGC, why the medicalization of FGC became prevalent in urban areas, and how it proceeded with the commercialized form of FGC. This study reviews the existing literature and analyses secondary data from government survey reports and policy documents to answer these questions. The results indicate that the high prevalence of FGC in Indonesia is caused by the complexity of the ambiguity of the government’s stance and policy towards FGC and the influence of the actors involved in FGC practices, such as the government, religious organizations, and medical professionals. Hence, legal measures and comprehensive and culturally sensitive strategies are needed to abandon FGC practices in Indonesia.

More Korean women participate in economic and social activities, but also more of them decide not to work or to delay childbirth. This study used data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (KLoWF) between 2010 and 2018 to examine changes in awareness of the policies on maternity protection and work-family balance support, and the factors behind them. We selected 972 female workers (between 15 and 49 years of age) for this analysis. Using Growth Mixture Modelling (GMM), we identified three types of changes in awareness. Having lower education levels and fewer children, working in production rather than professional management, and having a smaller workforce increase the likelihood of being in the ‘reducing’ type of awareness change. These findings suggest the need for a review of current maternity protection and work-family balance support systems, and guide the future directions for improvement which we identify at the end of the article.

This article explores the use of affect in the study of anti-gender movements – a loosely connected network of actors that seeks political goals through their opposition to women's and LGBTQ+ rights and lives. Drawing on ethnographic data from Spain, it examines ‘anti-gender’ moods and the collective attunements that underpin these movements. Through this affective turn, it suggests that these moods can have profound binding and mobilising effects, capable of cultivating dynamics of hateful love; this is, anti-gender movements create spaces that nurture love for the perceived ingroup and simultaneously stoke hate towards the Other. The article suggests that how things are communicated is entangled with what is communicated, stressing the importance of the expert as a figure that contributes an authorising dimension to this mood of hateful love.

Despite a large body of literature investigating the impact of self-help groups (SHGs) on women, less detailed attention has been paid to the complicated relationship between SHGs and politics, beyond political ‘awareness’. Based on qualitative on the ground research in West Bengal, this article shows that the relationship between politics and SHGs is highly complex, since political involvement in SHGs can create conflict and division in communities but also can provide unique opportunities for women. By drawing on theories of social exclusion and feminist literature on the public/private binary, this article argues that politics is critical in understanding how SHGs operate, particularly the way in which political exclusion through SHGs fuels ostracisation and conflict in communities.

In the aftermath of Iran's Islamic revolution, the representation and expression of women's sexuality have undergone stringent official censorship. Zoya Pirzad stands out among Iranian female authors for subtly challenging the Islamic regime's censorship of Iranian women's bodies and sexuality in her writings. In Things We Left Unsaid (2012), while articulating the sexual desires of her protagonist, Pirzad adeptly employed indirect writing techniques to safeguard her work from censorship. This article delves into the author's nuanced literary techniques, including similes, metaphors, idioms, symbols, allusions, haptic perception, and the portrayal of bodily effects, as means to subvert Iran's official censorship. Pirzad employs these literary tactics to discreetly depict her protagonist's illicit sexual relationship, interwoven with the author's critique of the government's repressive policies on women's rights. To understand the intricate dance between the said and unsaid in Pirzad's work, this article draws upon the insights of affect theory.

Although banned in Turkey in 1926, the number of cases of polygyny has increased in the country as a result of forced migration from Syria. This patriarchal practice, which exposes women to violence before and during marriage, deepens gender inequality. This article seeks to better understand the experiences of women involved in polygynous marriages initiated by Turkish men, and to make gender-based violence visible. It relies on interviews with Turkish and Syrian women part of the same households located in three Turkish provinces bordering Syria. We found that both Turkish and Syrian women experience violence in polygyny, and that their different legal status and the validity of their marriages shape the experiences and demands of these two groups of women.