This study analyzes the constraining factors of women's empowerment in rural contexts, focusing on socioeconomic and sociocultural factors. It examines the limited access to economic resources, employment opportunities, gender roles, social norms, and access to education as segregating elements, restricting empowerment. From this perspective, the purpose of this research is to review the specialized literature to analyze these factors and determine guidelines to strengthen empowerment in rural communities. With a qualitative approach, the research is also descriptive (...) and reviews studies and specialized sources. The findings show that the main obstacles are limited access to economic resources and employment opportunities, along with traditional gender roles and lack of education, which in turn limit the economic participation and influence of rural women in the community, leading to the conclusion that it is necessary to address these elements comprehensively, promoting policies and programs that improve access to resources, education and gender equality, facilitating an environment that empowers rural women and allows them to fully contribute to their communities. (shrink)

Recent literature shows that ethics of care can be used as a theoretical basis to add a new, important dimension to social issues. Th.

The article examines the effect of cooking food in kitchens on the health of women, as women and children are at a greater risk to indoor air pollution (IAP). It is important to study the cooking practices and prevalent behaviours among African women to understand the magnitude of the danger they face. The study suggests that a decline in the combustion of solid fuels and the use of clean energy can improve health among women and children, (...) as well as sustainability goals. Proverbs 17:22 says, ‘A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones’. Bible verse Numbers 35:33–34 indicates, ‘You shall not pollute the land in which you live’. The cooking fuel analysis framework among rural women in Africa will guide forward the governments’ sustainability policies for communities to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being of women and children. Contribution: The article conducts a comprehensive analysis of the literature on African cooking practices. A combined search string is made with keywords. Thematic content analysis is conducted with NVivo (produced by QSR International). The article covers two themes, namely improved well-being and suggesting policies to combat climate change and its impacts. Policies and schemes at grassroots levels and better economic conditions in African countries can help to overcome challenges and change health-damaging cooking behaviours. The new advanced sustainability analysis framework has the potential to influence modern kitchen fuels and increase the adoption of new technologies in African villages. (shrink)

Female-entrepreneurship plays a significantly important role in rural areas of China today. In fact, it is a driving force behind inclusive economic development of the country as a whole. However, notably very little literature out there has focused on the impact of how widespread usage of information technology tools affects the mothers entrepreneurship in the outskirt regions. Here, in this paper, the authors attempt to explore the finer details of such an impact by utilizing the data from the (...) 2017 China Integrated Social Survey; along with the IV-Probit model to explore the transmission mechanism. Interestingly enough, it was discovered that Internet applications and tools do indeed increase entrepreneurship among women with children by a roughly 7.88%. In addition, this paper finds that the utilization of such “InfoTech” promote a continuous progress in entrepreneurship among those women with children who endeavor to start a self-managed enterprise in the less developed areas. Lastly, when looking the analysis of the transmission mechanism, this paper found that the role of Internet-usage in promoting rural mothers entrepreneurship was mainly through three factors – the gender equality effect, the information learning effect, and the financing effect. This accumulated data will be thoroughly presented here in the ensuing sections. (shrink)

The literature on Dalit women largely deals with issues of violence and oppression based on intersections of class, caste, and gender. Women’s bodies, sexuality, and reproductive choices are linked to the ideological hegemony of the caste–gender nexus in India, with marriage and sexual relations playing crucial roles in maintaining caste boundaries. Often, the ways in which women manipulate their multiple, interlinked identities as women, Dalits, workers, and homemakers to resist control over their bodies, negotiate conjugal (...) loyalty and love, and construct a sense of selfhood is missed in the analyses. Based on research in rural Tamil Nadu, I analyze Dalit women’s narratives that reflect multiple concerns and dilemmas about marital choice and violence, generating in the process a deeper understanding of agency, voice, and gender relations, as fluid, dynamic, and intersecting in response to changing experiences, positionalities, and subjectivities. (shrink)

Poverty statistics in many countries of the developing world, with Zimbabwe being no exception, continue to show a gender-skewed trend, with women more than men increasingly being more affected. This is worrying, considering the fact that it is women who are the majority, and they carry the brunt of the burden for most household duties. Zimbabwe adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and yet women continue to be hit hard by poverty. This was a qualitative study involving (...) interviews and focus group discussions with 58 purposively sampled participants from Muchadziya village to determine the extent to which women in Muchadziya village are contributing towards sustainable development in Zimbabwe. The aim of this article, was to explore the ways in which women in Muchadziya village are contributing towards the alleviation of poverty. In the process, they will be contributing towards the attainment of some of the SDGs, such as the ones focusing on ending poverty in all its forms everywhere (SDG 1) and ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture (SDG 2). Using Africana womanism theoretical framework, the article maintained that African women should be perceived as agents, not subjects, of development and transformation in their communities. Findings indicated that women in Muchadziya village are selling various products and have sought markets in Beitbridge, Gweru and Zvishavane to sell them; others have set up shops and flea markets, and others make use of the land even though they do not own it to produce farm products to fight against poverty. The study concluded that women, despite being in difficult circumstances, are capable of contributing towards the achievement of the SDGs, particularly SDG 5 focusing on women’s empowerment and attaining gender equality. It is therefore recommended that women be given the necessary support to achieve more. Contribution: In a context where women are the most affected by poverty, Ndau women have proven that they can be agents of change by contributing towards the achievement of SDGs such as ending poverty in all its forms, zero hunger, education, gender equality and women’s empowerment and water and sanitation. Not much scholarly attention has been paid to the agency of women in Chimanimani in enhancing Zimbabwe’s sustainable development. This gap in literature might be influenced by the fact that African women, particularly women in rural areas, are perceived as beneficiaries or recipients of aid or development initiatives. As such, most programmes mainstreamed by aid or donor agencies in Africa have a specific focus on distributing aid to women and girl-children. Unfortunately, such programmes rarely seek to capacitate or empower their beneficiaries; hence, their interventions eventually disempower the intended beneficiaries. (shrink)

The shift from the conventional agri-food system to alternative practices is a challenging transition for agricultural producers, yet surprisingly under-studied. Little research has examined the social and cultural processes in rural communities that mobilize producers and construct and sustain producer-driven alternative food networks (AFNs). For AFNs to go beyond just offering “alternative foods” or “alternative networks” and to be constructed as “alternative economies”, this transformation in the producer community is indispensable. This paper presents a case study of a (...) class='Hi'>rural cooperative in Shanxi, China. The discontent with both productivist agriculture and the social decay in communities motivated a group of women to engage in a decade-long process of social mobilization, cultural reconstruction, and learning by experimentation. Through this, they developed an alternative vision and successfully created a localized alternative socio-economic model, which I call “anti-productivism”. It prioritizes ecological sustainability, self-reliance, reciprocity, and cultural values over output maximization, productivity growth, commodity exchange, and monetary gains. This case contrasts sharply with the urban-initiated, consumer-driven AFNs studied in the China literature, which mostly just offered alternative foods but brought little change to the producer community. It shows that the alternative economy must be embedded in an alternative community united by strong social bonds and shared cultural values. (shrink)

What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? Was it brought about by biology, culture, social institutions, or individual choices? And what were its consequences - for women, for men, for society at large? Women were key to the changes in the European economy between 1600 and 1800 that paved the way for industrialization. But we still know little about this female 'shadow economy' - and nothing quantitative or systematic.This book tackles these questions in a (...) new way. It uses a unique micro-level database and rich qualitative sources to illuminate women's contribution to a particular pre-industrial economy: the German state of Württemberg, which was in many ways typical of early modern Europe. Markets expanded here between 1600 and 1800, opening opportunities outside the household for both women and men. But they were circumscribed by strong 'social networks' - local communities and rural guilds with state support. Modern political scientists have praised social networks for generating 'social capital' - shared norms and collective sanctions which benefit network insiders, and sometimes the whole society. But this book reveals the dark side of 'social capital': insiders excluded and harmed outsiders, especially women, to the detriment of the economy at large.Early modern European economies differed widely in their restrictions on the role of women. But the monocausal approaches that dominate the existing literature cannot explain these differences. This book proposes an alternative approach driven by the decision individual women themselves made as they negotiated a wide array of constraints and pressures. We are not only brought closer to the 'bitter living' pre-industrial women scraped together, but find out how it came to be so bitter, and how restrictions on women inflicted a bitter living on everyone. (shrink)

ICT for development projects often focus on integrating social factors in information systems design. A well-designed ICT4D solution must be tailored to the needs of the people who will use them and subsequently, requires an extensive understanding of the context and constraints in people’s lives. With an objective to explore how context-specific issues influence the conveyance of appropriate agricultural information to women, this paper uses PROTIC, a 5-year collaborative project between Monash University and Oxfam, as a case. PROTIC was (...) implemented in three climate vulnerable ecological zones of Bangladesh with an aim to overcome the agricultural information gap for rural women. Based on a study in mixed research method and triangulation, this paper brings evidence on the significance of considering context-specific attributes in designing effective and sustainable information services for marginalized women farmers in developing countries. The paper upfolds some significant recommendations which is expected to contribute to the domain of context-specific information system design in resolving socio-economic problems to pave the way of sustainable development. (shrink)

Urban dwellers are more likely to develop mental disorders such as mood and anxiety disorder as well as schizophrenia compared to rural dwellers. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that even short-term exposure to nature can improve mood and decrease stress, but the underlying neural mechanisms are currently under investigation. In the present intervention study we examined the effects of a one-hour walk in an urban vs. natural environment on activity in the amygdala, a brain region previously associated with stress (...) processing. Before and after the walk 63 participants underwent an fMRI paradigm inducing social stress. Since there is a pronounced gap in the literature regarding interindividual differences in stress-related neural effects of urban and natural environments, we set out to explore sex differences. We observed that amygdala activity decreased after the walk in nature, but only in women, suggesting that women may profit more from salutogenic effects of nature. Moreover, performance on the arithmetic tasks improved in women after the walk in nature, whereas men performed better after the walk in the urban environment. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report differencial tendencies in men and women concerning the stress-related neural activity as an effect of acute exposure to urban vs. natural environments. Furthermore, our findings highlight the importance of sex differences when exploring effects of the environment on brain function and stress. Evidence for beneficial effects of nature on stress-related brain regions may inform urban design policies to focus on providing more accessible green areas in cities and this study suggests that sex differences in experiencing the environment should be taken into consideration. (shrink)

Civic agriculture is characterized in the literature as complementary and embedded social and economic strategies that provide economic benefits to farmers at the same time that they ostensibly provide socio-environmental benefits to the community. This paper presents some ways in which women farmers practice civic agriculture. The data come from in-depth interviews with women practicing agriculture in Pennsylvania. Some of the strategies women farmers use to make a living from the farm have little to do with (...) food or agricultural products, but all are a product of the process of providing a living for farmers while meeting a social need in the community. Most of the women in our study also connect their business practices to their gender identity in rural and agricultural communities, and redefine successful farming in opposition to traditional views of economic rationality. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore whether the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas of China. The results suggest that the usage of credit cards will be affected by the behavior of other farmers; namely, the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas. We also verify that women, older, and low-academic farmers show stronger peer effects. The results emphasize that, compared with the mass farmers and vulnerable farmers, the usage of elite (...) farmers is more likely to affect the same behaviors of other farmers. Our study contributes to prior literature by giving empirical insights into the consequences of peer effects on the credit card usage of farmers, which conduces to a better understanding of the financial decision-making of farmers. The research may provide a practical implication for the optimal design of policy interventions. On the one hand, banks and other financial institutions can promote innovative financial products in rural areas with the help of peer effects; on the other hand, regulators can regulate farmers’ wrong financial behaviors by the social multiplier of peer effects to reduce systemic risks in rural finance. (shrink)

Examines criteria for settling on productive and situation-appropriate development projects.

Imagining super rich women in the real and fictional world has long been a struggle. Those few depictions that do exist are scattered across time periods and literary genres, reflecting the legal restrictions that, at different points in time, would not allow women to accumulate assets independent of the patriarchal forces in their lives. The scarcity of extremely wealthy women in literature and film is confirmed by Forbes magazine’s list of the fifteen richest fictional characters that (...) features forty different fictional men and only nine women, with never more than two female characters nominated in a single year. This article explores the depiction of three exceptionally wealthy women: Cruella de Vil in The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956) by Dodie Smith, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens, and the figure of the stepmother in various adaptations of “Cinderella.” I demonstrate how the protagonists’ wealth allows them to manipulate others and disconnect themselves from patriarchal and societal expectations. Further, I argue that these affluent antagonists are “rogued” by their respective narratives, highlighting their perceived anti-feminine and emasculating behaviour resulting in a mode of narration that greedily gazes at and shames their appearances and supposed unattractiveness. While this genealogy of rich rogues reiterates the narrow scope of imagining wealthy women on the page and on the screen, there are moments in the narratives that disrupt stereotypical depictions of these wealthy characters who defy the labels imposed on them. (shrink)

This article explores aspects of the textual relationship between women and early modern London by examining three verbal ‘snapshots’ of the city in works either written by women or focusing on women in their urban environment. The first text, Isabella Whitney's ‘Wyll and Testament’ (1573), addresses London from a rural perspective, treating the city as a fickle male to whom she wants to hand back all his treasures. The poem constructs a vivid and ironic social topography, (...) giving a glimpse of the roles of men and women in the Tudor city. The second text is by Mary Carleton, the roguish Restoration figure who defended her apparently ‘counterfeit’ life in the prose of The Case of Madam Mary Carleton (1663). Carleton's London is a place of unwanted seduction and sexual intimidation, highlighting a gendered moral geography even while the memoir itself titillates the reader with the account of her bizarre experiences. Finally, in a coda to the discussions of Whitney and Carleton, early eighteenth-century London is viewed through Jonathan Swift's satirical mock-pastorals of squalid urban life, in which female identity, like the city itself, is a site of violence, disgust and deception. Together, these textual representations of women and early modern London indicate the complex interactions of gender, literature and the early modern city. The analysis of the texts also suggests the significance of the ironic voice as a quintessentially urban literary mode, the prevalence of the idea of woman as a commodified topographical site, and the function of metaphors of courtship or marriage as indicators of the paradoxical attractions of the city. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to assess the usage pattern of telecentres, how rural women frame telecentres and barriers that limit use of telecentres. Further, the study examined the effects of demographic characteristics and location on telecentre usage. Design/methodology/approach The study used a sequential mixed research design in three rural districts surrounding telecentres: Kongwa, Sengerema and Kilosa districts. The study population comprised rural women who were users and non-users of telecentres. The study conducted six focus group (...) discussions with 37 users and six FGDs with 36 non-users in the first phase of the study in 2014; questionnaires were administered to 90 users and 90 non-users in the second phase of the study in 2015. Findings The primary use of telecentres among users was to access internet, followed by information and communication technology training courses and secretarial purposes. Rural women used internet for educational purposes, followed by news, information on health issues, job opportunities, social and entertainment issues. Rural women currently using internet were more likely to be better educated and have higher incomes at both bivariate and multivariate analysis. Users indicated that they faced the following barriers towards using telecentre: short duration of ICT training, frequent power outages, low speed of internet and few computers at the telecentres. Non-users were not using telecentres because of lack of ICT skills and language barriers. Originality/value This study provides empirical evidence to telecentres, libraries and other rural ICT initiatives to design rural ICT services that are gender-sensitive and demand-driven. (shrink)

This article provides an ethnographic analysis of the agency of women who reside in the rural areas of the Argentine Pampas, based on their promotion and production of agroecological family horticulture. The recognition of these women’s agency through care – care of their children, global care, and green care – offers a significant challenge to some metrocentric and Eurocentric feminist perspectives that claim care work can only be oppressive for women. The first of these types of (...) care empowers women to improve the nutrition of their children. It also relates to another underlying type of care, which is to provide a sufficiently robust education as to ensure their children have a better and alternative future. The second type of care has the power to socially transform the territorial space of the district’s countryside and its marginalized populations which, through care, acquire greater public and political attention. The third type of care empowers women to transform and care for the environment, and is exercised by not using pesticides in horticultural production and by disseminating knowledge on the matter. In line with discussions of postcolonial feminism (Abu-Lughod, 1986; Mahmood, 2001; Suárez Navaz, 2008), I argue that certain properties that are attributed to women relative to caregiving – by way of a dichotomous view of gender relations – fuel their agency: for these women the cultivation of vegetables is a form of agency that actively combats food, training and labor inequality. (shrink)

Poverty creates many problems. Out of which one major problem is an increase in migration rate. In Pakistan, the rate of inter province and rural urban migration has increased in the last few years resulting in an expansion in urban population. The objective of this study was to explore the experience of women who have migrated from rural to urban areas with their families and are living in urban slums. Moreover, the study aims to explore the reasons (...) of migration from rural to urban areas, the change occurred in their living conditions and their level of satisfaction. Total 100 women from selected katchi abadis of Karachi and were in-depth interviewed through questionnaire method. To have an in depth analysis of the situation, both open and closed ended questions were included. Results show that most of these women have migrated with their families due to poverty. The need is to take decisions that promote equity and social justice. The distribution of resources and development planning need to focus on the need of urban and rural areas on equal bases because just moving towards metropolitan city does not change their living rather it is deteriorating the situation. (shrink)

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 4 Quality Education has highlighted major challenges for all nations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality access to education, facilities for children, and young adults. The SDG4 is even more important for developing nations as receiving proper education or vocational training, especially in science and technology, means a foundational step in improving other aspects of their citizens’ lives. However, the extant scientific literature about STEM education still lacks focus on developing countries, even more so (...) in the rural area. Using a dataset of 4967 observations of junior high school students from a rural area in a transition economy, the article employs the Bayesian approach to identify the interaction between gender, socioeconomic status, and students’ STEM academic achievements. The results report gender has little association with STEM academic achievements; however, female students (αa_Sex[2] = 2.83) appear to have achieved better results than their male counterparts (αa_Sex[1] = 2.68). Families with better economic status, parents with a high level of education (βb(EduMot) = 0.07), or non-manual jobs (αa_SexPJ[4] = 3.25) are found to be correlated with better study results. On the contrary, students with zero (βb(OnlyChi) = -0.14) or more than two siblings (βb(NumberofChi) = -0.01) are correlated with lower study results compared to those with only one sibling. These results imply the importance of providing women with opportunities for better education. Policymakers should also consider maintaining family size so the parents can provide their resources to each child equally. (shrink)

Trust is of great significance to the economic and social development of a country. In the case of China, the trust of rural women has undergone tremendous changes along with the development of rural areas. It is seen that the trust of rural women has changed from localized to generalized trust, and it is stated that the major factor leading to this transformation is education. To explore the phenomenon empirically, the current study uses the survey (...) data of rural women sourced from China Family Panel Studies over the year 2018. Through the ordered probit model, the study reveals that education plays a significant role in influencing rural women’s generalized trust and localized trust. Through mediation analysis, the study further reveals that reliance on Internet information, access to public resources, and income are the factors mediating the relationship between education and generalized trust. Besides, the outcomes further unveil that the impact of education on localized trust is stronger when the level of mobility is low. For robustness check, the current study additionally employs a regression discontinuity model. The overall findings elucidate that education is the major factor triggering the trust of rural women in China. The findings propose that policymakers in China should imply education-oriented strategies as individuals with higher levels of education are more inclined to trust others. (shrink)

Proper utilization of antenatal and postnatal care services plays an important role in reducing the maternal mortality ratio and infant mortality rate. This paper assesses the utilization of health care services during pregnancy, delivery and post-delivery among rural women in Uttar Pradesh and examines its determinants. Data from a baseline survey of UP Community Mobilization project was utilized. A cross-sectional sample of currently married women who delivered a baby 15 months prior to the survey was included. Information (...) was collected from 2208 women spread over five districts of UP. Information on socio-demography characteristics, utilization of antenatal care, delivery and postnatal care services was collected. To examine the determinants of utilization of maternal health services, the variables included were three ANC visits, institutional delivery and PNC within 42 days of delivery. Separate multilevel random intercept logistic regressions were used to account for clustering at a block and gram panchayat level after adjusting for covariates. Eighty-three percent of women had any ANC. Of them, 61% reported three or more ANC visits. Although 68% of women delivered in a health facility, 29% stayed for at least 48 h. Any PNC within 42 days after delivery was reported by 26% of women. In the adjusted analysis, women with increasing number of contacts with the health worker during the antenatal period, women exposed to mass-media and non-marginalized women were more likely to have at least three ANC visits during pregnancy. Non-marginalized women and women with at least three ANC visits were more likely than their counterparts to deliver in an institution. Contacts with health worker during pregnancy, marginalization, at least three ANC visits and institutional delivery were the strong determinants for utilization of PNC services. Self-help group membership had no association with the utilization of maternal health services. Utilization of maternal health services was low. Contact with the health worker and marginalization emerged as important factors for utilization of services. Although not associated with the utilization, SHGs can be used for delivering health care messages within and beyond the group. (shrink)

Phenomenological interviews with queer women in rural Nova Scotia reveal significant forms of trauma experienced during labour and birth. Situating the accounts of participants within both phenomenological and intersectional analyses reveals harms enabled by structurally embedded heteronormative and homophobic healthcare practices and policies. Our account illustrates the breadth and depth of harm experienced and outlines how these violate core ethical principles and values in healthcare.

Pour des raisons pratiques autant qu’idéologiques, les États socialistes ont souhaité la pleine participation des femmes au travail, qui supposait leur libération des tâches ménagères dévoreuses de temps. Ils ont, pour la plupart, passé un contrat social implicite avec leurs populations féminines : les femmes à l’usine et au champ, en échange d’une réduction des tâches domestiques, soit à travers leur socialisation, soit par la fourniture de produits finis allégeant le travail. L’article entend montrer que la Chine rurale fut une (...) exception à ce modèle. Alors que la participation des femmes rurales au travail augmentait fortement, le rationnement de marchandises peu abondantes et une politique empêchant les paysans de disposer d’argent liquide faisaient que les textiles et autres produits industriels sont restés hors de portée de la majorité des ruraux. En conséquence, des millions de femmes rurales ont continué, au prix d’un travail manuel laborieux, à vêtir et nourrir leurs familles, à un moment où triplait leur participation aux travaux des champs. Cette double charge particulièrement intense a permis à l’État chinois une rapide accumulation. (shrink)

Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism is the first book-length work to explore the interrelationships between contemporary female musicians and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, music, and literature by women and men. The music and videos of contemporary musicians including Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, The Carters, Hélène Cixous, Missy Elliot, the Indigo Girls, Janet Jackson, Janis Joplin (and Big Brother and the Holding Company), Natalie Merchant, Joni Mitchell, Janelle Monáe, Alanis Morrisette, Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith, St. Vincent (Annie (...) Clark), and Alice Walker are explored through the lenses of pastoral and Afropresentism, Gothic, female Gothic, and the literature of William Blake, Beethoven, Arthur Schopenhauer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Dacre, Ralph Waldo Emerson, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Ann Radcliffe, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Horace Walpole, Jane Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth to explore how each sheds light on the other, and how women have appropriated, responded to, and been inspired by the work of authors from previous centuries. (shrink)

The paper aims at critical reconsideration of a motif popular in Indian literary, ritual, and pictorial traditions – a tree goddess (yakṣī, vṛkṣakā) or a woman embracing a tree (śālabhañjīkā, dohada), which points to a close and intimate bond between women and trees. At the outset, I present the most important phases of the evolution of this popular motif from the ancient times to present days. Then two essential characteristics of nature recognized in Indian visual arts, literature, religions (...) and philosophy will be distinguished: (1) a dynamic, creative, self-sufficient and inexhaustible power, and (2) a passive, merely reproductive or vegetative, and dependent field of potentiality. The paper is to demonstrate the interdependence of the popular concepts of nature identified with femininity, and their iconic representations circulating for centuries in Indian culture, with a specific line of argument repeatedly used in social practices and public debates. While doing so, I consider the semiotic function of a cultural topos which proves to be an effective instrument for construing and supporting the gender roles and gender identities. As a modern example illustrating vitality and persuasive power of the motif of yakṣī and śālabhañjīkā, I refer to the Chipko Movement, a group of rural women based in the Garhwal Himalayas (state Uttarakhand), who fought against the mass cut of trees in the 1970s. They were involved in the wide-spread environmental campaign which significantly affected the ecological policy of the local and state authorities. Thus, a traditional motif of the visual arts has been revived and re-elaborated by the activists of this ecofeminist movement through converting the symbolic potential of yakṣī/śālabhañjīkā into social and political power. (shrink)

The history of women's status in British Society is the "story of a quest" a long seemingly endless one. Women seeking a better, more acknowledged life have suffered, then gone forward, then retreated and so on. Women have sought "--- entry into the world, of education, and of growth, including growth in power ---". In this paper I propose to trace the history of the social status of British women from the seventeenth century to the late (...) nineteenth century, as it was reflected in their literature as well as from historical social documents. (shrink)

Ecofeminism is theoretically diverse, as drawn from various ecofeminists who understand women-nature relationships differently. The common ground, however, is that they all draw on the concept of gender to understand this close relationship. This paper explores the ecofeminist view behind the mobilization of women for conservation, a subsequent reimagining of age-old stork-related myths and a reinterpretation of symbols of intangible culture, and an attempt at confronting the erstwhile anthropocentric nature of conservation. The qualitative case study focuses on the (...) Hargila Army, a community-based conservation initiative in Dadara, Assam, primarily led by women, aiming to conserve the greater adjutant stork, locally known as Hargila. The rural women’s lived experiences with the stork and its habitat – trees and wetlands – transform the ecological and wildlife issue into a feminist one. There are varied ways embedded in tradition and culture through which they have been carrying out stork conservation. The research is significant for it addresses a research gap on women’s environmentalism in the context of Assam, which has been neglected in literature reviewed for the purpose. It also empirically contributes to the ongoing dialogue on ecofeminism in action. (shrink)

This article explores the political role of rural and indigenous women in the context of the socio-environmental, health and political crises in Chile, where social movements have pressured the political establishment to decisively move towards a change in Chile’s constitutional foundations. The study analyses the historical political demands and strategies of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI) as a case of the women’s peasant movement with a relevant political role in shaping the (...) social demands in the face of the crises. Following the political ecology of food through the decolonial and ecofeminist perspective and the social movement theory, findings indicate the current relevance of rural and indigenous women as political actors of change, a relevance that has been neglected for most of Chile’s history. With their leadership and socially grounded demands, peasant and indigenous women are influencing the political agenda decisively using strategies that are shared with other peasant movements in Latin America. Rural and indigenous women are fundamental political actors that should undoubtedly be considered when studying struggles for social change in the 21st century. (shrink)

A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s conceptual framework of (...) class='Hi'>women leaders as either “change agents” or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gendered organization. (shrink)

This book explores contributions by some of the most influential women in the history of philosophy, science, and literature. Ranging from Sappho and Sophie Germain to Stebbing and Evelyn Fox Keller, this work ultimately demonstrates the impact these non-canonical, sometimes unknown or hidden, sources had, or may have had, on the recognized male leaders in their fields, from Aristotle to Pascal, Kant, Whitehead, and Russell. Chapters reflect philosophical pluralism, both analytic and continental themes, and cover figures reaching across (...) the entire history of ideas in the West, from pre-historic times to the twentieth century. Anyone interested in coming to know or in preparing to teach women in the history of philosophy, science, and literature will appreciate this collection and its myriad insights into the still unrecognized voices of non-canonical sources across these disciplines. (shrink)

Aims and objectives. Participant narratives from a feminist and queer phe- nomenological study aim to broaden current understandings of trauma. Examin- ing structural marginalisation within perinatal care relationships provides insights into the impact of dominant models of care on queer birthing women. More specifically, validation of queer experience as a key finding from the study offers trauma-informed strategies that reconstruct formerly disempowering perinatal relationships. Background. Heteronormativity governs birthing spaces and presents considerable challenges for queer birthing women who may (...) also have an increased risk of trauma due to structurally marginalising processes that create and maintain socially constructed differences. Design. Analysis of the qualitative data was guided by feminist and queer phe- nomenology. This was well suited to understanding queer women’s storied narra- tives of trauma, including disempowering processes of structural marginalisation. Methods. Semistructured and conversational interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of thirteen queer-identified women who had experiences of birthing in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. Results. Validation was identified as meaningful for queer women in the context of perinatal care in rural Nova Scotia. Offering new perspectives on traditional models of assessment provide strategies to create a context of care that recon- structs the birthing space insofar as women at risk do not have to come out as queer in opposition to the expectation of heterosexuality. Conclusions. Normative practices were found to further the effects of structural marginalisation suggesting that perinatal care providers, including nurses, can challenge dominant models of care and reconstruct the relationality between queer women and formerly disempowering expectations of heteronormativity that govern birthing spaces. Relevance to clinical practice. New trauma-informed assessment strategies recon- struct the relationality within historically disempowering perinatal relationships through potentiating difference which avoids retraumatising women with re- experiencing the process of coming out as queer in opposition to the expectation of heterosexuality. (shrink)

Informed by sociological standpoint, intersectional, and gender regime theories, we examine perceptions of a diverse sample of Iranian Kurdish women in the city of Sanandaj about their legal status and social positions. We find perceptions of injustice, oppression, male control, and lack of opportunity associated with both the family and broader society. Kurdish women are socially located in structures and institutions of both private and public patriarchy. At the same time, their growing educational attainment and knowledge of possibilities (...) for change enable them not only to articulate grievances but also to aspire to, and sometimes engage in, collective action for women’s rights. By focusing on an under-studied region, this article contributes to the wider literature on Kurdish women, underscores the continued salience of intersectional and standpoint approaches, and expands gender regime theorizing beyond Western cases. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the problem of loneliness in Hannah Arendt in the light of her considerations about totalitarianism. We seek not only to clarify this concept, but to examine to what extent it is important for understanding certain aspects of Arendt's critique of philosophy in general and political philosophy in particular.

In "Peripheralities: 'Minor' Literatures, Women's Literature, and Adrienne Orosz de Csicser's Novels" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek discusses events surrounding Adrienne Orosz de Csicser's work. For the contextualization of the events Tötösy de Zepetnek employs his own framework of "comparative cultural studies" here applied to "minor literatures" and women's literature and Shunqing Cao's "variation theory." While Orosz's novels are not considered exceptional, the author achieved notoriety after locked up in a mental institution. In addition to three published (...) novels, in an unpublished novel Orosz narrates her love affair with a Roman Catholic bishop. Knowledge about her novel's contents resulted in the bishop orchestrating Orosz's commitment to a mental hospital. The context in which Orosz's texts are located in is the socio-political situation in Hungarian society prior to and shortly after the First World War. (shrink)

‘Doing gender’ has often been used as the theoretical entrance for research on gender issues in the social sciences. However, research has been accused of using the concept in a ‘ceremonial’ way, treating gendered structures as static. In response to this claim, this article investigates the process of ‘hierarchization’, or how gendered and racial hierarchies occur through everyday practices and political and economic contexts in the rural, wild berry industry in contemporary Sweden. The industry has gone through a thorough (...) transformation, from irregular and small-scale production to regularized and large-scale production, which has affected the intersection of gender and racial structures. In particular, Thai women have gone from being active participants both as entrepreneurs and as workers, to working under native men, or being passive receivers of men’s remittances. The mechanisms behind the intersection of gender and racial structures are a complex interplay of economic, social and institutional factors, which act on nested global, national and translocal scales. (shrink)

While caregiving in northern, rural and remote communities takes place in the context of conditions unique to smaller communities, caregivers live with social policies that are shaped by urban norms rather than rural realities. In times of economic decline and government cuts rural issues of limited services and infrastructure as well as dependency on a single industry can lead to unemployment, community and family instability, and a decline in health and well-being. During these times caregivers face increased (...) pressure to voluntarily fill the gaps left by service cuts. Research with women caregivers in four communities in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada explores the experiences of caring and the social, geographic, economic and political contexts within which the caregiving occurs. The discourse of economic efficiencies that speaks solely to the monetary value of care is contrasted with the human condition of connectedness and relationships. These two contradictory perspectives are uncovered during interviews with women caregivers and analyzed in the framework of Olena Hankivsky's discussion of an ethic of care. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Crossing Borders: Love between Women in Medieval French and Arabic LiteraturesCary Howie (bio)Sahar Amer, Crossing Borders: Love between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008, xii + 254 pp.Sahar Amer’s Crossing Borders adds to the expanding bibliography on medieval sexualities by showing the resonances between certain female same-sex relationships in medieval French literature and analogous, though generally more explicit, (...) relationships between women in the medieval Arabic tradition. In the process, sexuality becomes a way of talking about the porous boundaries that constitute the field of Old French, and perhaps even Western, literature as such.Amer’s book couldn’t have arrived at a better time, as Sarkozy’s French government once again, in the name of French values, intervenes in the debates around religion and clothing in the public sphere, debates in which the old divides between France and its constitutive others—in this case, certain kinds of Islam and certain kinds of women— have once again come to the fore. By proposing that “medieval French writing is essentially a hybrid, cross-cultural project” (163), Amer contributes not just to the emerging sense of the Middle Ages’ postcoloniality (as articulated by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Sharon Kinoshita, among others) but also to the work being done by intellectual historians and cultural theorists such as Joan Scott and Diane Rubenstein on the fantastic investments that take place within and around French universalism (which could be said to inform the idea of the literary no less than the idea of the citizen).Crossing Borders begins with the notion of borders as “fluid spaces of cultural exchange, adaptation, and collaboration” (ix), and it is the emphasis on a more general sense of cultural exchange, more than the fact of borders per se, that will permeate the chapters that follow. (In fact, the border, like “the lesbian,” Amer’s polemical term of choice for the women she describes, may be important for her argument precisely insofar as it resists visibility, as it remains to some extent difficult to locate.) Amer’s reading of Old French texts, in dialogue with a handful of medieval Arabic narratives and erotic compilations, proceeds from an understanding of medieval culture in which there is “a continuity rather than a rupture between medieval and modern conceptions of alternative [End Page 156] sexualities” (9), and in which it is possible to argue for influences that are tough, if not impossible, to trace empirically. According to this logic, ideas and stories may have circulated “next to” more tangible material goods taken to and from the Arab Islamicate world (13), and French authors may have “culled some elements from Arabic material and wove[n] them into a literary fabric to suit their audience’s sensibilities” (163). This attentiveness to what “may have” happened (e.g., 44, 110) is one of the signature gestures of Amer’s critical poetics, which I am tempted to describe as an imaginative historicism, committed at once to the explanatory power of historical context and to what Amer will repeatedly call the “imagination of the audience” (e.g., 79).After an initial chapter outlining this “cross-cultural” poetics of contextualization and imaginative investment, chapter 2, “Crossing Linguistic Borders,” is dedicated to seven stanzas of a late twelfth-century poem, Étienne de Fougères’s Livre des manières, in which a long description is given of women who go “against Nature” by “join[ing] shield to shield without a lance” (32). Amer reads these military metaphors for female homoeroticism in light of Arabic sources including, for example, al-Jurjani’s eleventh-century Anthology of Metonymic Devices, in which one of the cited commonplaces observes, “They [lesbians] manifest a war in which there is no spear-thrusting” (36). Most provocatively, Amer argues for the Arabic provenance of two otherwise untranslatable words in Étienne’s text, “trutennes,” which she traces to an Arabic root meaning “the mons of the beloved” (40), and “eu,” which she interprets as an orgasmic onomatopoeia. From mons to moans, the “medieval French literary lesbian” is a condensation of forms and fantasies—and noises—that come from before and beyond medieval France. In fact, the... (shrink)

There are reasons to believe that decision‐making capacity (mental competence) of women in labor may be compromised in relation to giving informed consent to epidural analgesia. Not only severe labor pain, but also stress, anxiety, and premedication of analgesics such as opioids, may influence women’s decisional capacity. Decision‐making capacity is a complex construct involving cognitive and emotional components which cannot be reduced to ‘understanding’ alone. A systematic literature search identified a total of 20 empirical studies focused on (...) women’s decision‐making about epidural analgesia for labor pain. Our review of these studies suggests that empirical evidence to date is insufficient to determine whether women undergoing labor are capable of consenting to epidural analgesia. Given such uncertainties, sufficient information about pain management should be provided as part of prenatal education and the consent process must be carefully conducted to enhance women’s autonomy. To fill in the significant gap in clinical knowledge about laboring women’s decision‐making capacity, well‐designed prospective and retrospective studies may be required. (shrink)

The mental and emotional dimensions of climate change are increasingly concerning as extreme events become more frequent and severe, ecosystem destruction advances, and people become more aware of climate impacts and injustices. Research on climate emotions has rapidly advanced over the last decade with growing evidence illustrating that climate emotions can impact health, shape climate action, and ought to be considered in climate change communication, education, and engagement. This paper explores, describes, and discusses climate emotions in the context of Canada’s (...) Provincial North: a vast region characterized by a vulnerability to climate change, remoteness, political marginalization, diverse Indigenous populations, and economies/livelihoods tied to resource extraction. Using postal survey data collected in two Provincial North communities, we aim to describe climate emotions experienced in the context of Canada’s Provincial North, including relationships among specific emotions; and examine if socio-demographic variables show a relationship with climate emotions. Results show high levels of emotional response to climate change overall, with worry and frustration as those emotions reported by the highest percentage of participants. We also find significant difference in climate emotions between men and women. A methodological result was noted in the usefulness of the Climate Emotion Scale, which showed high reliability and high inter-item correlation. A notable limitation of our data is its’ underrepresentation of Indigenous peoples. The findings contribute to a greater understanding of climate emotions with relevance to similar settings characterized by marginalization, vulnerability to climate change, urban islands within vast rural and remote landscapes, and economies and social identities tied to resource extraction. We discuss our findings in relation to the literature and outline future research directions and implications. (shrink)

This creative intervention draws on our recent work investigating the lived experiences of poor rural communities in Bolivia’s Chiquitania, a region deeply affected by wildfires in recent years. We share learning and materials from our project, Playing with Fire, situated at the interface of and combining Boal’s model of Forum Theatre and social science research. The aim and hope of the project were to use Forum Theatre to open up space for dialogue on the complex and entangled gendered, social (...) and cultural politics of wildfires. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

The Pāli tradition presents a diverse and often contradictory picture of women. This book examines women's roles as they are described in the Pāli canon and its commentaries. Taking into consideration the wider socio-religious context and drawing from early brahmanical literature and epigraphical findings, it contrasts these descriptions with the doctrinal account of women's spiritual abilities. The book explores gender in the Pāli texts in order to delineate what it means to be a woman both in (...) the context in which the texts were composed and in the context of their ultimate goal - that of achieving escape from the round of rebirths. The critical investigation focuses on the internal relationships and dynamics of one tradition and employs a novel methodology, which the author calls "critical sympathy". This assumes that the tradition's teaching is valid for all, in particular that its main goal, nibbāṇa, is accessible to all human beings. By considering whether and how women's roles fit within this path, the author examines whether women have spiritual agency not only as bhikkhunīs (Buddhist nuns), but also as wives and mothers. It offers a new understanding that focuses on how the tradition construes women's traditional roles within an interdependent community. It aims to understand how what many scholars have seen as contradictory and inconsistent characterizations of women in Buddhism have been accepted and endorsed by the Pāli tradition. With an aim to show that the Pāli canon offers an account of women that is doctrinally coherent and consistent with its sociological facts, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Buddhism and Asian Religion. (shrink)