OBJECTIFYING WOMEN’S BODIES IN THE WORKPLACE: GENDER-BASED MISCONDUCT, EGREGIOUS SEXUAL PRESSURE, AND MISOGYNISTIC PRACTICES

The article discusses the gendered implications of recent political developments in the region. It argues that women and gender are key to both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary processes and developments and not marginal to them. It explores the significance of women’s involvement, the historical context of women’s political participation and marginalization in political transition. Theoretically, developments in the region point to the centrality of women and gender when it comes to constructing and controlling communities, be they ethnic, religious or political; the significance of the state in reproducing, maintaining and challenging prevailing gender regimes, ideologies, discourses and relations; the instrumentalization of women’s bodies and sexualities in regulating and controlling citizens and members of communities; the prevalence of gender-based violence; the historically and cross-culturally predominant construction of women as second-class citizens; the relationship between militarization and a militarized masculinity that privileges authoritarianism, social hierarchies and tries to marginalize and control not only women but also non-normative men.

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Sexual Harassment in Display Work: The Case of the Modeling Industry

Gender & Society ◽

10.1177/08912432211036890 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 089124322110368

Author(s):

Jocelyn Elise Crowley

Keyword(s):

Content Analysis ◽

Sexual Harassment ◽

Qualitative Content Analysis ◽

First Person ◽

Women's Bodies ◽

Feminist Analysis ◽

Specific Category ◽

Power Differentials ◽

Gender Based ◽

Over Time

This feminist analysis focuses on sexual harassment within a specific category of jobs known as display work, where primarily women’s bodies are commodified and sold to consumers, and often through the conduits of powerful male industry leaders. Using qualitative content analysis methods to analyze 88 subjective, first-person narratives of harassment from 70 models working within the fashion business, I describe how the commodification of bodies interacts with the particular features of the modeling industry—the premium placed on youth, ambiguous industry demands, and the presence of kingmakers—to produce an environment in which opportunities for sexual harassment can proliferate. All these factors impose extreme worker vulnerability costs on predominantly women and ultimately contribute to maintaining gender-based, hierarchical power differentials between men wielding authority within the industry and these models over time.

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Corporeal Dimensions of Gender Violence: Ladina’s Self and Body in Eastern Guatemala

Studies in Social Justice ◽

10.26522/ssj.v2i1.965 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 12-26 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Cecilia Menjívar

Keyword(s):

Social Inequalities ◽

Field Work ◽

Gender Violence ◽

Women's Bodies ◽

Rural Town ◽

The Social ◽

Women's Lives ◽

Gender Based ◽

The Relationship ◽

Depth Interviews

Based on 30 in-depth interviews with Ladina women and field work conducted in a rural town in eastern Guatemala, I examine the physical expressions that violence can take on the women's bodies, such as common physical ailments that result from emotional distress as well as sicknesses that are caused directly by the conditions in which they live. A central theme in the discussion is the embodiment of violence as it is expressed in the control of the women's body in the social milieu, such as the control of their socializing and visiting. I use a sociologically- and anthropologically-informed lens to situate corporeal questions within structures of social inequalities and human suffering and, thus, this examination contributes to debates about the relationship between body and society, macro and micro processes in the social world, as well as explorations between the women's lives and their rights. As such, this examination permits to unveil embedded structures of violence that assault the women's dignity and provoke suffering, as well as those instances in which gender solidarity is created. This examination allows us to explore implications for gender-based social justice.

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Spatial and Psychophysical Domination of Women in Dystopia: Swastika Night, Woman on the Edge of Time and The Handmaid’s Tale

Humanities ◽

10.3390/h8010038 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 38

Author(s):

Elisabetta Minico

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Mental Hospital ◽

Female Gender ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Women's Bodies ◽

Female Figures ◽

Gender Based ◽

The Stability ◽

The Impact ◽

Shed Light

Analyzing Burdekin’s Swastika Night Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale the article aims to examine the relations between space, gender-based violence, and patriarchy in women’s writing. Hitlerdom in Swastika Night, the mental hospital and the future dystopian New York in Woman on the Edge of Time, and Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale are spatial and social nightmares. The authorities that rule these dystopias imprison women in restricted spaces first, limit their vocabulary and daily actions, deprive them of their beauty, freedom and consciousness, and impose maternity or sexuality upon them. My analysis will connect the limitation of space with the psychophysical domination the objectification and the disempowerment of the female gender. Hoping also to shed light on the dynamics and the reasons for contemporary real gender-based violence and depreciation, the study will be focused on: 1. the ways space contributes to the creation, the stability and the dominion of dystopian powers; 2. the representation and the construction of female figures, roles and identities; 3. the techniques of control, manipulation and oppression used by patriarchal powers against women; 4. the impact of sex, sexuality and motherhood on women’s bodies; and 5. the possible feminist alternatives or solutions proposed by the novels.

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