Search Results (331)

While public sanitation is a fundamental component of urban infrastructure, it is often treated as a discretionary amenity rather than a core public service subject to legal standards of equality and dignity. This article challenges gender-blind approaches to urban planning by examining how inadequate public toilet provision constrains women’s everyday mobility and presence in public space, raising questions of indirect gender discrimination and regulatory responsibility. Drawing on an exploratory mixed-methods study (N = 97), the analysis combines quantitative assessment of access barriers, qualitative user narratives, and time-based measurement of total restroom use duration to examine patterns of use and waiting with particular attention to gender differences. The findings indicate that hygiene-related concerns are reported across both men and women, without clear evidence of a consistent gender-specific pattern, while women are disproportionately affected by throughput failures, long waiting times, and the absence of care-integrated facilities. At the same time, variation in support for gender-neutral toilet solutions suggests that user acceptance may not align with model-based proposals in the literature. These inequalities reflect an institutional accountability gap with legal implications in the governance of everyday public services. By shifting the focus from numerical potty parity to temporal inequality and responsibility, this article contributes to feminist legal scholarship by situating sanitation within questions of temporal inequality and institutional responsibility. While exploratory in nature, the findings offer empirically grounded insights into inequalities in everyday sanitation governance. Full article

Cariño (care) should be central to equity-centered transformation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) higher education. Yet, relational leadership practices that prioritize culturally grounded care—such as cariño—are often absent in STEM initiatives, leaving unexamined how Women of Color (WOC) enact these practices to advance equity for historically marginalized students. Employing a qualitative methodology grounded in Chicana Feminist Epistemology, in-depth interviews were conducted with five WOC leading a multi-institutional, federally funded STEM initiative. Analysis revealed four interrelated dimensions of what we are calling “Cariño Competence”: (1) relational attunement grounded in moral obligation, (2) protective action when project systems fail students, (3) boundary-setting as care and resistance to extractive labor, and (4) community-sustained resilience through networks of WOC leaders. The findings offer a data-driven theorization of Cariño Competence, capturing how WOC operationalize culturally grounded care as a strategic, protective, and resistive praxis. By centering students as the moral and epistemic anchor of leadership decisions, this study demonstrates how relational, culturally sustaining practices can humanize bureaucratic systems, buffer harm, and advance systemic transformation in STEM higher education. These insights contribute to scholarship on culturally responsive leadership and provide a practical framework for advancing equity, inclusion, and empowerment in higher education contexts. Full article

As AI permeates daily life, algorithmic platforms increasingly function as complex sociotechnical systems that shape public perception and societal attitudes. Addressing concerns that AI text-to-image models and search engines reinforce stereotypes, this study focuses on China, a context marked by traditional gender norms and a vast technological ecosystem, examining how algorithmic systems perpetuate gender power structures through occupational representations. Using algorithmic audits of 60 occupations, Z-tests, and QAP network analysis, this study compares platform gender representations with national census data, systematically distinguishing “generative bias” in AI platforms (Doubao Seedream 3.0, Jimeng Image 3.0) from “retrieval bias” in search engines (Baidu, Sogou). Findings reveal that search engines reinforce stereotypes by over-representing dominant genders and obscuring non-mainstream ones. Generative AI exhibits more radical distortions. The specialized AI Jimeng shows a strong gender polarization feature, while the general AI Doubao shows an ideal balanced gender presentation tendency, balancing representation yet creating an equally false reality. Compared to search engines, AI platforms have greater creativity in representing occupational gender. This study reveals a mutually reinforcing bias cycle among audiences, media, and algorithms, offering a crucial non-Western perspective for feminist technology studies and significant implications for equitable AI governance. Full article

This article examines Heather Marshall’s Looking for Jane as a literary engagement with the history of reproductive control in postwar Canada. It contends that the novel redefines trauma as a structurally generated condition, influenced by institutional and social constraints. Through its fragmented, multi-generational narrative, comprising letters, testimonies, and disjointed timelines, the text reconstructs a history that survives only in partial, mediated, and often unstable traces, foregrounding the difficulties of rendering reproductive trauma historically visible. By contextualising individual experiences within a broader framework of institutional oversight and referencing documented practices such as forced adoption and restricted access to abortion, the novel links literary form to historical realities. Its concluding paratext extends this dialogue into the present, engaging the reader directly and emphasising the ongoing significance of reproductive trauma in contemporary discourses on responsibility and recognition. Full article

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a critical public health concern in South Africa, which ranks among the countries most severely affected worldwide. Women and girls are reported to bear the greatest burden, with men predominantly identified as perpetrators. GBV is particularly prevalent in densely populated areas such as informal settlements, where adverse socioeconomic conditions create fertile ground for its proliferation. Despite the scale of this problem, to the researchers’ knowledge, few studies, especially qualitative ones, have been conducted in such contexts, even though informal settlements are widespread across the country. To generate nuanced insights into this phenomenon, the current study explored the lived experiences of women victims of GBV in Alexandra, one of South Africa’s largest informal settlements. The study was grounded in an interpretive paradigm, employed a qualitative approach, and adopted a single-case-study design. Participants were purposively selected from a population of women victims of GBV, and the sample size was determined through data saturation. Data were collected through individual, face-to-face semi-structured interviews and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) with Nvivo version 15 software and interpreted through the lens of feminist theory. The findings revealed that GBV has profound effects on women’s emotional, psychological and social wellbeing, extending beyond the immediate incidents to also affect their overall functioning, erode self-confidence, and limit opportunities for independence. The use of intimidation and coercion tactics by perpetrators trapped victims in a cycle of dysfunction which diminished agency, and fostered isolation. Interpreting these findings through a feminist lens highlights the systematic and recurrent nature of GBV, which cuts across personal, structural and relational dimensions. The findings underscore the urgent need for context-specific interventions that will help dismantle structures of abuse while supporting victims’ and/or survivors’ autonomy, recovery and, most importantly, capacity to rebuild identity and trust. Full article

The Abortion & Religion study has collected over 200 personal narratives of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women having abortions in the United States in the midst of an increasingly hostile and stigmatizing sociopolitical climate. Rooted in feminist theoretical claims about the epistemological value of situated knowledge, the Abortion & Religion study seeks to center the voices and experiences of people having abortions as a corrective to dominant negative attitudes about abortion in US cultural spaces. In this paper, three of the principal investigators engage in a methodological analysis of the study design using Tone Stangland Kaufman’s five categories of reflexivity to demonstrate how our epistemic insight as researchers who have also had abortions is a critical aspect of the epistemological insight that is foundational to the Abortion & Religion study. Since one of the goals of the study is to address the fictive “abortion imaginary” that shapes how people in the US think and talk about abortion, this methodological discussion of the study’s design demonstrates the epistemological value of centering the experiences of people who have had abortions as a corrective to the abstract, disembodied knowledge that shapes the epistemic injustice of the abortion imaginary. Full article

This article examines how justice institutions produce and reproduce gender-based violence against women through the invisibilization of moral violence, with particular attention to their spatial dimensions. Drawing on the concept of juridical–patriarchal habitus, the study conceptualizes justice institutions not only as sites of legal action but as spatial formations that shape the visibility, recognition, and adjudication of harm. Using a feminist ethnographic approach, the article analyzes two cases of gender-based violence documented in 2020 in the municipality of Querétaro, Mexico. The findings demonstrate how movement into legal and institutional spaces transforms lived experiences of violence, as procedural requirements, evidentiary expectations, and institutional interactions operate as spatial filters that render certain forms of harm visible while obscuring others. In this process, justice actors construct and reproduce gendered stereotypes about what counts as violence, simultaneously positioning women as victims and subjecting them to processes of revictimization. By conceptualizing the invisibility of moral violence as a spatially mediated process, the article contributes to debates in legal and feminist geography, highlighting how institutional spaces not only respond to gender-based violence but actively participate in its production and concealment. Full article

The current research employs a mixed-methods approach to examine associations among mentoring, academic belonging, and the imposter phenomenon (i.e., persistent self-doubt) among undergraduate women. Participants were 383 women who were undergraduates in an introductory psychology course at a public university in the Southwestern United States. Approximately half of the sample reported that they had either an academic or non-academic mentor. Quantitative analyses revealed that women with mentors had lower levels of imposter feelings and higher levels of academic belonging compared to those without mentors. Qualitative analyses explored whether and how women discussed their imposter experiences with their mentors. Using a deductive approach informed by feminist research on empowerment, thematic analysis revealed two key themes: combatting imposter phenomenon at the individual level and acknowledging imposter phenomenon as a shared experience. Together, these themes provide new insight into how mentors can help women cope with imposter experiences. The current study highlights novel associations between mentoring and women’s academic experiences. The findings also indicate that academic and non-academic mentors can both play a helpful role in enhancing women’s academic experiences and alleviating feelings of inadequacy. Full article

This study examines women’s marginalization and agency in We Need New Names by situating the novel within broader frameworks of transnational genealogies, spatial politics, and colonial migration legacies. Utilizing Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), based on Lazar’s gender ideology and discourse approach in (de)constructing gender identities and gender equality, along with Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space Theory, this study analyses how diaspora displacement and colonial past influence gendered identities. Through a qualitative and interpretive analysis of select textual episodes, the study reveals how spatial displacement, linguistic fragmentation, and cultural hybridity both inhibit and facilitate female empowerment. Women counter marginalization using everyday tactics such as silence, storytelling, embodied resistance, and discursive bargaining, turning marginal spaces into spaces of resistance. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to migration studies, spatial inequality, and decolonization by exploring gendered identities in transnational and postcolonial settings. Full article

Background/Objectives: Current research on vaginismus predominantly represents White cisgendered and heterosexual women of reproductive age. It is unclear how health professionals (HPs) navigate and support the needs of patients with vaginismus who are gender, sexually, ethnically, religiously, age and/or disability diverse. Therefore, this qualitative study explored health professionals’ experiences and perceptions of patient diversity to holistically assess and support people with vaginismus. Methods: In 2023–2024, 23 HPs in general practice, uro/gynaecology, pelvic floor physiotherapy, mental health, nursing and clinical education participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were inductively thematically analysed with a critical feminist poststructuralist focus on heteronormativity, cisnormativity, ethnocentricity, chrononormativity, and able-bodied normativity. Results: Two themes were developed. The first theme on ‘uneven attention of diversity dimensions in the assessment and support of vaginismus’ explored patients’ ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender, age and disability. The second theme on ‘sexually and gender-diverse people’s varied treatment goals for vaginismus’ examined nuanced challenges between heterosexual and non-heterosexual women and limited representation of gender-diverse people. Conclusions: The findings suggest that not discussing patients’ diversity may contribute to their identity erasure and ethnocentric exaltation of White centrality. Treatment approaches may uphold heteronormativity. HPs often described vaginismus as a young woman’s problem. It is recommended that HPs review whether patients with advancing age and/or disability suppress desires for pain-free sex due to societal norms. Decolonising approaches and abject theory could inform the development of inclusive health resources. This can assist HPs to sensitively and supportively assess patients’ diversity to improve their holistic health and well-being outcomes for vaginismus. Full article

This paper examines transformations of Islam in Europe through the lens of the feminisation of religion, drawing on evidence from an Italian context. It asks whether this category—traditionally applied to Christian contexts—can also illuminate gender dynamics within Muslim institutions. Focusing on those Italian mosques where generational change is underway, sustained by the active involvement of second-generation Muslims, it shows that generational change has been accompanied by both a quantitative and a qualitative feminisation: women now outnumber men in several of the associations studied and increasingly occupy public and leadership roles, while also contesting double standards and reinterpreting their participation through religious knowledge and piety. These developments express greater female autonomy and authority, challenging stereotypes of Muslim women’s subordination and echoing aims traditionally associated with secular feminist discourse. Yet, as in the historical Christian case, such transformations unfold within a religious framework, advancing women’s roles through faith-based reinterpretations rather than secular claims to emancipation. These developments point to a form of “feminisation without feminism,” a formulation that signals a theoretical stance: these transformations cannot be fully grasped through secular paradigms of emancipation alone but require attention to the ongoing interplay between religious and secular logics in shaping female agency. The article thus contributes to understanding the plurality of modernities and the post-secular reconfigurations of gender and religion in contemporary Europe. Full article

This article examines how LGBTQ+ allyship is made, felt, and negotiated within a secondary school workshop using creative, participatory methods. Drawing on affect theory (see Sara Ahmed) and feminist new materialist scholarship (see Barad, Renold, among others), the paper analyses a collaborative collage activity centered on Pride flags and symbolic materials. Rather than treating allyship as a fixed identity or a knowledge-based achievement, the study explores how it emerges relationally through encounters with materials, symbols, bodies, and digital technologies. Through close analysis of moments of uncertainty, affective attachment, cutting and shattering of symbols, and the collective naming of the final artwork, the article traces how not-knowing, pleasure, confusion, and togetherness function as generative forces for allyship. The workshop is framed as a propositional research-creation space in which phones, Google searches, bunting, scissors, and book references intra-act with young peoples’ lived experiences, redistributing epistemic authority and unsettling school-based expectations of correct knowledge. The findings contribute to existing research on LGBTQ+ inclusion and allyship in schools by shifting focus from identity labels and institutional frameworks toward the affective, material, and speculative processes through which allyship is assembled in the moment. In doing so, the paper offers an alternative conceptualisation of allyship as relational practice rather than static position, with implications for creative pedagogy and inclusive educational research. Full article

This article examines how mental health discourse functions as a credibility technology in Portuguese news reporting on sexual violence between 2014 and 2023. Using Critical Thematic Analysis and grounded in feminist media studies and critical mental health scholarship, the article analyses a qualitative corpus of reporting-oriented news items published in Público and Observador. The dataset consists of systematically selected articles in which mental health discourse functions as a substantive explanatory frame for sexual violence. Psychiatric, psychological, therapeutic, and metaphorical registers grant, withhold, or condition believability, allocating responsibility and organising care through norms of stability, risk, and expert verification. The analysis identified eight recurring discursive clusters through which mental health language stabilises truth claims: it can legitimise institutional authority, regulate survivors’ credibility, and explain perpetration through pathologising tropes, while often displacing structural accounts of gendered violence and reproducing ableist stigma. By specifying the credibility work performed by mental health discourse, the article contributes to debates on trauma-informed, survivor-centred, and anti-ableist reporting and proposes a transferable framework for analysing the sexual violence–mental health nexus in journalism. Full article

This is a study of the nun as a queer archetype of femininity across Kate O’Brien’s fiction and non-fiction. Alongside characters who are actual nuns, the fiction includes characters who can be described as ‘nun-like,’ especially in their renunciation of sexual desire. In the fiction, this secular renunciation is aligned with religious celibacy as actively chosen and ethically purposeful and situated as similar to artistic creativity. The study argues that O’Brien’s nuns are paradoxical and queer figures, undermining the temporality, class politics and models of human subjectivity central to O’Brien’s own ideological commitments. Attending to these nun figures prompts significant questions about the liberal feminist politics underpinning contemporary O’Brien studies and the prevailing critical reception of O’Brien as an exemplary Irish woman writer. Full article

This paper explores the intersection of embodied trauma, resilience, and healing as represented in contemporary art, focusing on a case study analysis of the autoethnographic practice as a reflexive methodology that integrates personal lived experience with cultural, political, and artistic analysis of the works of Zlatar. Central to this study is examining the notion of rematriation, which calls for the reclamation of women’s histories and the restoration of knowledge passed down through generations. Through a series of her paintings, including works from her series A Serbian Renaissance, Refuge For the Oppressed Body, and The Minotaur Came and I Surrendered, Zlatar interrogates the transmission of trauma across generations of women, from Balkan origins, focusing on issues such as gender-based violence, displacement, and identity formation. These works challenge dominant narratives by centring women’s experiences not through externalized indicators or representations of healing, but mediating how mind–body relationships have dialogue, and her art employs this concept as spaces for memory, survival, and meaning-making. Drawing on feminist philosophy, artwork analysis and trauma studies, this paper situates Zlatar’s art to address historical inequities in women’s healing and the ongoing struggle for women’s agency and safety in contemporary society. Full article