Gender, Politics, and Everyday Life: Power, Resistance, and Representation

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760). This special issue belongs to the section "Contemporary Politics and Society".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 18965

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA 23606, USA
Interests: American religious history; gender
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA 23606, USA
Interests: Terrorism studies; Kant studies; logic and critical thinking; epistemology; legal reasoning; philosophy of law
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

While this year’s Global Conference on the Status of Women and Gender had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 health crisis, several papers were submitted for publication. The conference theme this year was “Gender, Politics, and Everyday Life: Power, Resistance and Representation”. This interdisciplinary conference brings together participants from all academic fields to engage in wide-ranging conversations on gender and politics around the world. While formal politics loomed large in 2020, we encouraged an expansive understanding of political action and expression, inspired by Carol Hanisch’s essay “The Personal is Political”, which sees all relationships of power as political and connects women’s experiences, self-expression, and values to their lives as political actors and subjects. The papers in this Special Issue are representative of some of the more than 200 papers that were submitted.

These papers have a wide span of interpretations of the theme “The Personal is Political”. The topics of the papers included here range from negotiating homeless gender-based violence to social analysis and politics of protest. There are papers on political expression in cinema, literature and public speeches. The geography of the papers is also expansive, including such countries as India, Mexico, Lebanon, and Thailand. 

Prof. Dr. Dawn Hutchinson
Prof. Dr. Lori Underwood
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • gender
  • politics
  • intersectional
  • power
  • resistance
  • representation
  • public policy
  • equity
  • inclusion
  • protest

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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2 pages, 155 KiB  
Editorial
Introduction to Special Issue “Gender, Politics, and Everyday Life: Power, Resistance, and Representation”
by Dawn Hutchinson and Lori Underwood
Soc. Sci. 2022, 11(9), 407; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11090407 - 6 Sep 2022
Viewed by 1301
Abstract
The conference theme this year was “Gender, Politics, and Everyday Life: Power, Resistance and Representation” [...] Full article

Research

Jump to: Editorial

7 pages, 216 KiB  
Article
Hannah’s Suffering: The Power of Voice
by Stephanie M. House-Niamke
Soc. Sci. 2022, 11(6), 254; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11060254 - 9 Jun 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2802
Abstract
Hannah’s story in the Old Testament has been written about considerably by Jewish feminists, womanist theologians, and other biblical scholars. This paper strives to build upon these works in asking the reader to consider Hannah’s story from a liberatory theological theory of suffering [...] Read more.
Hannah’s story in the Old Testament has been written about considerably by Jewish feminists, womanist theologians, and other biblical scholars. This paper strives to build upon these works in asking the reader to consider Hannah’s story from a liberatory theological theory of suffering by Sölle, as well as a postmodern and non-religious lens as discussed by Sandoval’s Theory of Oppositional Consciousness in Methodology of the Oppressed and Lorde’s “Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”. This paper asks if this narrative can serve as an example of taking back one’s power by confronting a complex system of power and oppression for Black women. Intercessory prayer aptly defines the personal as political, especially with the multiple minoritized identities of Hannah. I argue that Hannah’s story can serve as a complex narrative of differential consciousness and the reclamation of one’s own power, by using her voice. Her audacity to correct a prophet, fight for her valid desire of motherhood, and determine her own happiness is evidence of an empowerment ethic that is necessary for minoritized women in a post-modern era and political climate where the erasure of all forms of difference and consciousness is the priority. Full article
20 pages, 343 KiB  
Article
The Sociocultural Dimensions of Gender-Based Violence in Afro-Mexican Communities in the Coastal Region of Oaxaca, Mexico
by Ilaria Sartini
Soc. Sci. 2022, 11(5), 188; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11050188 - 24 Apr 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3311
Abstract
In Mexico, as part of the historical and political context, race heavily influences a person’s opportunities. Moreover, the data refer to a scenario of normalized gender-based violence caused by sociocultural practices, the lack of application of the laws, and structural discrimination. Given this [...] Read more.
In Mexico, as part of the historical and political context, race heavily influences a person’s opportunities. Moreover, the data refer to a scenario of normalized gender-based violence caused by sociocultural practices, the lack of application of the laws, and structural discrimination. Given this precedent, the purpose of this study is to analyze the social and physical dimensions of gender-based violence in an Afro-Mexican community in the south of Mexico. The techniques used to gather data for this study consist of a variety of styles of interviews with a group of Afro-Mexican women from the Costa Chica of Oaxaca, who are survivors of gender-based violence, and participant observation obtained through conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Oaxaca. The social phenomena of emigration and alcohol and drug consumption, in combination with the cultural dimensions of the machista practices in this region of Mexico, are the material and immaterial spaces where GBV is produced and reproduced daily. An intersectional perspective of the context can be helpful when collecting data for effective and well-grounded public policies and intervention projects established on a feminist and women-centered perspective. Full article
15 pages, 1767 KiB  
Article
From Performance to Prison: The Case of Vera ‘Jacko’ Holme Analyzing Body Politics, Gendered Transgression and Socio-Political Identity of a Stage Actress, 1890–1914
by Twisha Singh
Soc. Sci. 2022, 11(3), 136; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11030136 - 17 Mar 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2672
Abstract
In Britain, during the nineteenth century the process of identity formation of a female performer was conditioned by a challenge towards the pre-existing gender norms that underwent a paradigmatic shift owing to the ‘new performative turn’. The story of Vera Holme popularly known [...] Read more.
In Britain, during the nineteenth century the process of identity formation of a female performer was conditioned by a challenge towards the pre-existing gender norms that underwent a paradigmatic shift owing to the ‘new performative turn’. The story of Vera Holme popularly known as ‘Jacko’, emanates from this very shift. Holme was an actress born in Lancashire in 1881. Often known as the ‘first female chauffeur of Britain’, she not only embodied the social, political and the sexual, but also imparted it through personal and dramatic means thereby challenging the ideology of separate gendered spheres much before the ideas of the ‘new Sapphic woman’ and ‘female masculinity’ came into being. Using the case study of Vera Holme, I study the socio-political identity of a stage actress who embodied gendered transgression across a time that permeated from her public life to private life and vice versa. Themes such as performativity, political theatre, deconstruction of sexuality and body politics become intrinsic in order to decipher the sexual lexicon of the time that fettered women on the condition of being socially and morally deviant. Utilizing the personal papers of Vera Holme, I posit her forays into theatre and politics, within this context, that will not only complicate the understanding of gendered transgressions but simultaneously will throw light on how theatricality socio-economically ‘enabled’ many women to break away from the existing normative patriarchal structures including Holme. Full article
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10 pages, 407 KiB  
Article
The Politics of Protest and Gender: Women Riding the Wings of Resistance
by Tasia Matthews
Soc. Sci. 2022, 11(2), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11020052 - 29 Jan 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4469
Abstract
The #MeToo movement, from its creation by activist Tarana Burke back in 2006 to its explosion on social media during the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual assault allegations, has continuously propagated images of gendered resistance from around the globe. In South Korea, Poland, Mexico, [...] Read more.
The #MeToo movement, from its creation by activist Tarana Burke back in 2006 to its explosion on social media during the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual assault allegations, has continuously propagated images of gendered resistance from around the globe. In South Korea, Poland, Mexico, Bangladesh, and more, large numbers of women protest a variety of gendered topics: from unjust rulings in cases of domestic violence, to the lack of reproductive rights, to femicide, to inaction by law enforcement on cases of stalking, harassment, or sexual assault, and more. These images clearly demonstrate that public resistance is dominated by women, even in societies that are seen to traditionally subjugate women—though this is not new, and women have always been involved in resistance even when there was no way to document their participation. However, in countries where conservative institutions, public opinion, and government policy that contribute to gender inequality are paired with punitive action for opposition, women face a higher risk of being punished, ostracized, or brutalized for their resistance. In Thailand, a military state with perhaps the strictest lèse majesté laws in the world, activists are frequently fined, imprisoned, kept under surveillance, disappeared, or forced to flee. Despite this, Thailand experiences frequent surges of public resistance, dominated by youth and overwhelmingly by women. Since February 2020, a large portion of the Thai population, consisting primarily of students, has taken to public demonstrations demanding a fair democracy and constitutional reform, joined together in exasperation over an uncertain future, a crippling economy, an untouchable elite, and a rigged election. In this now years-long movement, fueled by global support and sophisticated protest tactics learned from watching Hong Kong, we observe the inclusion of gendered protest topics and demands by Thai women and girls. This paper demonstrates how Thai women utilize the movement to demand progress in gendered areas by examining examples taken throughout the 2020 pro-democracy protest movement, with the overall objective of contributing to understanding the relationship between public resistance and feminism. Full article
16 pages, 267 KiB  
Article
Undocumented Latina GBV Survivors: Using Social Capital as a Form of Resistance
by Carolyn Stauffer
Soc. Sci. 2021, 10(12), 456; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10120456 - 27 Nov 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3448
Abstract
This research draws on the tradition of Latinx critical race theory (LatCrit) to explore how social capital is deployed by undocumented Latina GBV survivors as a form of personal and collective resistance. The study uses the social capital matrices of bonding, bridging, and [...] Read more.
This research draws on the tradition of Latinx critical race theory (LatCrit) to explore how social capital is deployed by undocumented Latina GBV survivors as a form of personal and collective resistance. The study uses the social capital matrices of bonding, bridging, and linking capital as its primary narrative analysis grids. The research qualitatively analyzes a sample of undocumented survivors’ counter-stories regarding three factors: citizenship status, help-seeking behaviors, and service use patterns. Research findings illuminate the social logics of GBV disclosure locations, the use of informal support services, and how survivors strategically deploy new economic opportunity structures. The article highlights the intersectionality of GBV and undocumented status, demonstrating how survivors leverage various forms of social capital to resist both the carceral state and the violence of abusers. Full article
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