THE SOCIAL BASES OF FEMINISM IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

Although several studies explore the political environmentsand institutional features of Western European women's movements,few have examined the mass attitudinal bases for feminist politicsin Europe. This article extends the study of feminist politicsby testing models of feminist attitudes developed in the UnitedStates with data collected in the European Community in 1983.We explore the connections between the support of feminist goalsand measures of marital status, female employment, socioeconomiclevel, age, religiosity, place of residence, and political partyidentification, focusing on differences in the predictors ofmale and female attitudes. Consistent with studies of the UnitedStates, we find that women's labor force participation fostersfeminist attitudes among themselves and their husbands. Age,education, religiosity, and partisanship are also found to bepredictors of feminist support. In contrast to studies of Americanwomen and men, we find that marital status has no effect inEurope. Our conclusions have implications for the future offeminist politics in Europe.     

Analyzing Politics and Change in Women's Organizations

Research on women's political action too often passes over women's organizations that do not officially adopt a feminist ideology and do not explicitly set out to change gender power relations. Based on implicit notions that such women's organizations are nonpolitical (or less interesting), the research often supports a false dichotomy between feminist and nonfeminist organizations rather than illuminates women's common political ground. This study addresses women's collective action, politics and change by focusing on the case of Nicaraguan Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs - women who lost a son or daughter in the revolution or Contra War. Although some members in Matagalpa critiqued male domination, the organization itself did not set out to challenge the gendered division of labor; indeed, their collective demands relied upon and in many ways reinforced traditional gender identities. I argue that such movements are important to feminist political analysis. As I demonstrate in this article, an organization's lack of an official feminist ideology does not mean that individual members do not express interests, identities and ideals that challenge the gendered status quo. Such research, however, requires a nuanced approach, recognizing women as both accommodating and resisting gendered social structures. Thus, this study challenges the dominant feminist-feminine dichotomy by demonstrating that women's collective action is not only per se political (and politically important) but may also challenge as well as reinforce gendered power structures.     

Transnational women’s activism in Japan and Korea:the unresolved issue of military sexual slavery

This article is about the transnational links formed between the Korean and Japanese women‘s movements in their campaign on behalf of the victims of ‘military sexual slavery’ during the Second World War. There is a growing literature that examines such networks. Yet, a deeper understanding of the emergence and activities of transnational advocacy networks is needed, particularly in the context of political opportunity structures. Social scientists who have developed the concept of political opportunity structures have, however, not provided a gender‐specific analysis of these. Of particular interest is the exploration of the role played by gender in an international human rights discourse as a political opportunity structure for women’s groups in Korea and Japan. This article, thus, explores the ways in which the feminist movements in Korea and Japan have made use of transnational legal means in politicizing and popularizing the issue of ‘military sexual slavery’ at both regional and global scales.     

Off the record: Margaret van Kleffens and the gendered history of Dutch World War II diplomacy

This article makes the case for recovering women’s roles from the forgotten corners of diplomatic history, and for considering the consequences of the gap between feminist and non-feminist research. It shows how ignorance of the gendered nature of diplomatic norms and practices impacts our understanding of diplomatic history, and how specific biographies are hampered by gender blindness in particular. Using the history of Margaret van Kleffens and Dutch World War II diplomacy as an example, the article demonstrates how historians’ continued neglect of the role of women and gender norms has influenced representations of twentieth-century diplomacy. To dismiss the history of gender and of women as by definition irrelevant to the actions of states and of male statespersons is not simply part of a self-appointed focus on the political at the expense of the personal; rather, it omits much of the political history too, reproducing stereotypes and resulting in a skewed understanding of diplomatic history and foreign policy decisions. The article argues that both historians and feminist scholars need to historicize gender in order to recognize women’s roles in diplomacy, and so gain a better understanding of the history of international politics as a whole.     

Women in Politics in Post-Transitional Democracies: the chilean case

This article looks at women's participation in formal political institutions in posttransition politics. Employing the case of post-dictatorship Chile, it outlines the barriers to women's participation in the formal political arena; discusses the various strategies that Chilean women are currently employing to overcome their exclusion; and finally, examines the challenges that political women confront in promoting 'women's interests' in political institutions. Throughout the article two main arguments are advanced. First, where women's movements do not demand institutional reforms during the transition period - a time when movements enjoy influence and parties are in flux - then the barriers to women in political institutions re-emerge. In Chile, the fact that women did not demand institutional reforms, such as quotas for women in decision-making positions, is linked tothe broader strategy of the movement tomake citizenship demands based on women's 'difference'. This strategy inhibited women from demanding power (i.e. access to institutions as individuals) because this conformed to a masculine-defined notion of politics inconsistent with women's 'different' style of practising politics. A second,related argument is that a strategy based on women's 'difference' hinders women in politics frompromoting feminist goals,especially in the climate ofsocial conservatism that characterizes post-transition Chilean politics. Despite these constraints and the many challenges Chilean women in politics confront, gains are being made, as women recognize the need for, and begin to demand, institutional reforms to expand their presence in formal politics.     

Tom Glynn and ‘Pickhandle Mary’ Fitzgerald: Two Irish Syndicalists in Pre-World War One South Africa

Abstract

Paired in 1911 as Irish ‘rebels’ by Archie Crawford, their mutual mentor, Tom Glynn and Mary Fitzgerald were pioneers of transnational syndicalism, in South Africa. Arriving separately in the country in 1900, they had taken different routes into labour activism, and despite being close political allies, had markedly different outlooks. She was a feminist, whose syndicalism has been judged ‘eclectic’; he, while committed to gender and racial equality, became a proponent of the ‘virile syndicalism’ of the Chicago-line Industrial Workers of the World. This article discusses their journalism in Johannesburg’s Voice of Labour, their roles as leaders in a number of significant labour disputes, the significance of their ‘Irishness’ in a largely British-oriented milieu, their geographical separation in 1911, and the definitive parting of their political ways on the outbreak of the First World War.     

Citizen Bodies: embodying citizens – a feminist analysis

The starting point for this paper is that bodies give substance to citizenship and that citizenship matters for bodies. However, the growing literatures on the body and on citizenship rarely 'speak to each other' in any straightforward sense. Feminist theory has made a significant contribution to both fields of thought,but once again the connections between these fields tend to be passing and underdeveloped. Feminist literature on citizenship – for example in discussions of participation – increasingly offers a critique of the model of the disembodied (supposedly universal) citizen as exclusionary and advocates taking bodies seriously (Lister; Yuval-Davis). Yet bodies appear in such discussions in quite limited ways and remain instrumentally conceived. On the other hand,the growing work on the body fromcontemporary feminist theorists has designated the body a political site par excellence (Grosz). Nevertheless, these writings are typically relatively abstract and philosophical, tend to perceive corporeal politics in circumscribed ways, and are positioned at a distance from political theorizing about implications for citizenship. We intend to consider how to flesh out the bodily element in feminist citizenship literature and how to interrogate the contextual sociality of the political in recent feminist theorizing of the body, in order to suggest ways of thinking about citizen bodies and related future directions for policy-making.     

Feminism and the New Women in Public Office

This paper addresses the question of why the ever-increasing numbers of women elected to state and local office give such low priority to issues related to the status of women. The paper surveys the sociology and political science literature to identify key variables which might account for so little change in the demographic characteristics and political priorities of women public officals. This review suggests that an increasing minority of women elected officials are feminist in the broadest sense and will support feminist policies as their numbers increase. These women are characterized by a newly legitimated ambition but dicriminated against by the political opportunity structure. The combination of ambition and thwarted opportunities considerably increases the probability of support for feminist policies.     

TOWARD A SYNTHESIS OF FEMINIST AND DEMOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES ON FERTILITY

In explaining fertility and reproduction and emerging patterns of childbearing, both demographers and feminists have centered their thinking on women's status (economic and social), women's changing roles and life experiences (increased labor force participation, increased availability of reproductive options, declining marriage rates in many parts of the industrialized world, and the centrality of women to development), and women as agents in micro- and macrolevel changes in family, fertility, and economic change. Although demography has recently begun to integrate feminist perspectives into fertility explanations, there is not yet a synthesis of feminist theoretical insights with demographic questions. Drawing from recent thinking on global and national political and policy challenges in the less and more developed worlds, to the epistemological shifts in knowledge of reproduction/mothering, to changes in the technologies of reproduction, this article moves toward an integration of feminist and demographic perspectives on fertility.
…far from the economic dependence of women working in the interests of motherhood, it is the steadily acting cause of a pathological maternity and a declining birthrate.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Women and Economics , 1899     

Politics,Feminism and Women's Professional Orientations:

The purpose of this study was to construct a typology of professional orientation of women lawyers based on their political identity, professional interests and patterns of institutional participation. Using factor and cluster analysis, four orientations were identified. Variations on instrumental-market and feminist themes are at the core of the orientations, and each is related to the broader political identities of the women and to the types of action they recommend as effective means of correcting sex-based inequities in the profession. Whereas the majority of lawyers adopt one of these perspectives in relatively undiluted form, the orientations of two small leadership groups are more complex. Although scholars believe that the entry of women will have important effects on legal practice and discourse, the results of this study, indicating diversity of orientation among women, suggest that the realization of this expectation is contingent on a variety of factors.     

FEMINISM, TECHNOLOGY AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY Learning from the past, imagining the future

This article examines second wave and post-second wave feminist writing about the possibilities of (contemporaneously) new information and communication technologies. A number of texts by key authors, including Shulamith Firestone, Valerie Solanas, Cynthia Cockburn, Donna Haraway and Sadie Plant, are examined in light of the social and political context of their time of writing as well as in relation to 'mainstream' information society theorists such as Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells. The main focus is on how these authors understand the transformative potential of technologies, and attention is drawn to the swings between optimism and pessimism about the role of technology for a feminist political agenda. The role and nature of manifestos are also explored, and the question of whether it is time for another feminist technology manifesto is raised. The article concludes by posing some methodological and theoretical challenges of developing an anti-essentialist (in relation to both gender and technology), politically engaged and relevant feminist research agenda that takes seriously both lived experience and structures of power. The footnotes are an experiment in autobiographical writing in which I make explicit my own connection to this literature and the politics of these debates.     

Neoliberal feminism: The neoliberal rhetoric on feminism by Australian political actors

Feminism seems to be experiencing a resurgence. This research examines an Australian case where this resurgence produces some bizarre outcomes and an uncomfortable mix of moderate and neoliberal feminisms, as conservative women distance themselves from the term feminist and conservative men embrace it. We rhetorically analyse the discourse of four conservative leaders using an ideographic analysis to reveal how political actors evoke ideologically laden terminology to support specific courses of action. For the conservative women, the ideograph feminist was too heavily laden with history. A more feminine‐liberal political discourse allowed them to explain their own success in individual terms and, by substituting support for feminism with a broader gender equality agenda, they could explain the government's policy approach of individualized rather than collective or state support to advance the needs of women. They are articulating a postfeminism sensibility themselves and neoliberal feminist other. For the conservative men, the ideograph feminist did not reflect on their own personal success or careers; they were happy to embrace it for purely political purposes to advance their standing with the voting public and saw no significance in terms of the government's policy approach of neoliberal feminism.     

Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday: From Bananas to Bingo

Abstract

Feminist studies of political economy have long pointed to the multifaceted ways in which global transformations are constituted by deeply gendered economic practices at the everyday level. Nonetheless, the increased analytical focus on the everyday within the study of international political economy (IPE) frequently fails to connect with feminist theories and gendered approaches. In this introductory essay, we argue that any discussion of a ‘turn’ towards the everyday in IPE must acknowledge the role of feminist contributions that predate, and indeed make possible, this shift in IPE scholarship's analytical gaze towards the everyday. We map out what might be understood as feminist political economies of the everyday—highlighting the points of connection between feminist scholarship on the everyday, as well as the ways in which feminist scholars engage with the notion of an everyday political economy in quite distinct and diverse ways—a diversity that reflects the methodological and theoretical pluralism of feminist political economy scholarship as well as the ever broadening geographical scope of feminist research.     

Transnational political practices and the receiving state: Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands

This article examines how the social and political contexts in receiving countries affect the transnational political practices of migrants and refugees, such as their mobilization around political events in their homeland. The case study explores the political participation of Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands in its full complexity, that is in both the immigration country and in homeland politics. The findings suggest that transnational political practices should not be reduced to a function of the political opportunity structures of particular receiving countries for two main reasons: (a) more inclusive political structures, which provide for more participation and co‐operation on immigrant political issues, may at the same time, and for that very reason, serve to exclude dialogue on homeland politics; (b) homeland political movements may draw on a different range of resources than their immigrant political counterparts, including those outside the local political institutional context.     

Unruly Theory and Difficult Practice: Issues and Dilemmas in Work with Women Politicians

The importance of exploring the 'gender' dimension in political research has achieved a level of acceptability over the past few years as more women become part of the political mainstream as elected representatives. Rather than being viewed as lone mavericks who at best operate as honorary men and at worst function as idiosyncratic (but powerful) leaders guided by whimsy and their menstrual cycle, women politicians are now viewed as legitimate foci for analysis. As women are achieving political incorporation into parliamentary democracies, if not always power to effect change once they are there,they inevitably become targets for media and academic interest. This paper explores some of the tensions which arise for a feminist researcher intent on pursuing a feminist politics but where the theory-practice dissonance is sometimes hard to handle. This becomes especially so where her interviewees do not always share the same political values and when they sometimes engage with precisely the same kinds of power games associated with male elites. When disclosure of personal values elicits an over-empathising (and sometimes slanderous) testimony by interviewees, such revelations carry their own ethical and moral dilemmas for the feminist researcher. The paper begins by discussing the key themes in feminist research practice, including problems of definition,before moving on to consider someof the issues which arise when doing interview-based work with elite women. It explores the lack of congruence which can arise between 'established' feminist principles relating to interviewing women 'subjects' and the reality of working with 'professional' interviewee groups such as women politicians.     

Feminist politics, domestic violence and the state

This paper explores the relationship between feminist politics and the state around the issue of domestic violence. Its focus is the refuge movement in Wales. Feminist analyses of the state and feminist political practice identify the state as an important object of struggle. A particular form of feminist politics, the refuge movement, has engaged with the state while retaining its autonomy. It has been instrumental in effecting legal changes which bestow certain rights on women threatened with domestic violence, and in increasing women's access to resources in the form of temporary refuge and permanent housing. Feminist political practice can affect the distribution of resources through engaging with the state, thereby enabling women to challenge the gendered power relations which structure their daily lives.     

Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Gender Analysis in Kosova

Gender relations fluctuate in times of violent change with flight, exile, displacement and return and relations of inequality between men and women can prevent women from fully participating in the reconstruction processes and gaining political voice. Undertaking a gendered analysis of Kosovar women's involvement in the emerging feminist reconstructive politics highlighted the ways in which international governmental responses at times hindered women's progress. The central concern in this Gender Audit is the extent to which encouragement has been given to increasing women's social,economic,educational and political participation - in both informal civic fora and organizations and at the formal levels of power. The Gender Audit assesses the gaps in policy-making, service provision, data collection and in co-ordination and monitoring of projects designed to increase the participation of women and girls. In post-conflict situations it is vital that all people are enabled to contribute their ideas, expertise and skills in reconstruction and rehabilitation processes leading to democratization and democracy-building. Working in coalitions combining local, national and international elements is providinga positive contribution for somewomen in Kosova.     

Affective virtuosity: Challenges for governance feminism in the context of the economic crisis

This article explores the possibilities and constraints for feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and its influence over policy making and public debate in the context of austerity and neoliberal governance. By analysing the process in which a group of Finnish academic feminists used their expert position to influence government policy in 2015–2017, the article illustrates the strategies they adopted to engage in political debates and how they negotiated the new political landscape. The research material was derived from two years of action research and participant observation and is considered through the theoretical lens of governance feminism. The article makes a distinctive contribution to extant theories of governance feminism, by drawing upon theories of affects and ambivalence as a complement to governance feminism's focus on discourses and co‐optation. We coin the term affective virtuosity to highlight the importance of affect in feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and in shaping the various perspectives available to feminist scholars in encounters with politicians and policymakers.     

The political is the personal: women’s participation in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement

This article examines women’s lived experiences as new activists in social movements. Taiwanese women – many of them housewives – joined the Sunflower Movement, a large-scale protest against a trade pact with China, and a related anti-nuclear movement in 2014. This study demonstrates how new women activists’ everyday political practices mutually construct the public and private spheres in the Taiwanese context. By ‘making private public’, these new activists use discourses of citizenship and maternalism to connect politics to social issues and daily life. Public participation makes these women feel empowered, and their daily actions transform politics from a set of formal, institutionalized practices to a practical fact of everyday life. This research also challenges the reproduction of a rigid private/public division in previous feminist scholarship that regards family and childcare as a separate realm that hinders women’s public participation. In a marked break from past accounts, these women don’t separate their caring responsibilities from their political actions. By focusing on new activists’ political action in and through their family and childcare, this research calls into question scholarly discussions that view maternalism primarily as a public discourse for mobilizing women or a visual strategy for collective protest. By considering the disruptive potential of all acts of mothering, this study paints a more complex and nuanced picture of women and mothers as protesters and reveals how activist women’s actions in the family and private social networks can be a central part of maternalist strategies’ radical potential.     

Swedish Feminism, 1835–1945: A Conservative Revolution

Abstract Analysis of the early Swedish women's movement shows that its accomplishments were shaped more by structural and political changes under way in Sweden at the time, than by specific feminist demands. My claim is that the gains of Swedish feminists largely accrued from efforts on the part of political state leaders to incorporate women as a constituent group during a period of increasing class conflict. Many of the Swedish social reforms which promoted gender equality were derived from the goals of politicians to modulate class tensions and increase their political base of support. This helps account for the fact that the gains won, while considerable, often had little to do with the project of the feminist movement.