Portrayal of Free Spirit in Adrienne Rich’s Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger and Alice Walker’s Meridian

The works of women writers of USA have become increasingly visible in the academy especially since 1970s because of their active involvement in contemporary women’s movement. Writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poets like Maya Angelou and Adrienne Rich and others have been strongly greeted for their ideologies. Undoubtedly, their works echo strong resistance against racism, patriarchism and militarism. The present paper highlights the remedy of the various maladies like male dominance, subordinated identity and submissive life. It is said that ‘every action has reaction’ and these writers believe that ‘”FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE”. So they have depicted the undaunted spirits among their female protagonists who fought bravely against the odds and eventually emerged victorious.

Language and gender in North Africa

This essay investigates and contextualises the emergence and evolution of the discipline of ‘Language and Gender’ in North Africa in an attempt to remedy the underrepresentation of this region in scholarship. I ground this essay in my experiences with Language and Gender in Morocco and the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA), both of which were central in shaping my academic journey. The pre- and post-Uprisings periods surrounding what is often discussed as the ‘Arab Spring’ in the early 2010s carried serious consequences for the emergence of Language and Gender as a discipline. These moments and my involvement in them were deeply impacted by specific historical, sociopolitical and intellectual dimensions, most saliently the women’s movement and the discipline of linguistics. My essay draws on these experiences to advocate for the importance of decolonising the international language and gender canon with North African perspectives that move beyond English and the Global North.

PENDEKATAN FEMINISME MELALUI GEREJA DI TORAJA UNTUK MENCAPAI KESETARAAN GENDER

This paper discusses how to approach Feminism through the Toraja church to achieve gender equality. In the Feminist approach, we will discuss what feminism is like through the Toraja Church, feminism means a women's movement that demands full equality of rights between women and men. Feminism usually arises because of injustices that occur to women, both in the context of politics, economy and ideology, so that through the Toraja church, problems that occur to women can be handled properly. To achieve gender equality, the problem of feminism must be completely resolved so that gender equality in the Toraja church can be carried out properly. This study aims to discuss the approach of feminism and gender equality. Equality can occur in the church when the leader pays more attention to the attitude of justice towards women so that they are not considered weak and abilities and needs can be considered within the scope of the church.

The Long-Term Struggle for Violence against Women Legislation: The Guatemalan Women's Movement and the Politics of Patience

A scholarly consensus depicts strong, autonomous domestic women's movements as critical for the passage of gender equality reforms, alongside openings in domestic and international political contexts. What, then, is a nascent women's movement seeking gender equality reforms to do if it lacks strength or a history of autonomous organizing? A long-term analysis of the Guatemalan women's movement's push for reforms to address violence against women demonstrates that one potential road forward is through a “politics of patience,” rooted in the pursuit of cumulative, incremental victories. Adopting a politics of patience allows nascent domestic movements in developing and post-transition contexts to achieve incremental victories that create future political openings while simultaneously building movement strength and autonomy over time. This finding highlights the temporal and strategic power of women's movements, as well as the iterative and potentially reinforcing nature of social mobilization and political reform.

Unfurling routes of self-determination in Aotearoa New Zealand: The Black Women’s Movement 1978 – 1982

<p>Self-determination is a transformative process of ideas and action. It can manifest in a variety of ways but is often dependent on the meeting of likeminded people, the circumstances they find themselves in, and the energy that fuels them into action. This thesis is a theoretical and empirical exploration of Māori and Pasifika women’s self-determination in Aotearoa via a study of the Black Women’s movement from 1978 to 1982. The primary focus is on the complexities, connections and contradictions of their identification with Blackness as part of an assertion of self-determination and Tino Rangatiratanga (Māori self-determination). Using the indigenous concepts of mauri (life force), whanaungatanga (familial relationships) and the koru (unfurling koru frond), this research shows how their Black identification was an important catalyst for a particular type of self-determination, asserted within the political landscape of both the public and private spheres. Black women often negotiated spaces of activism, making their struggles central to, and an example of, the core values that drive anticolonial activist politics. This investigation adds to current Māori activist literature, by addressing the largely ignored solidarity between Māori and Pasifika women within anticolonial activist movements of the era. Overall, the thesis contributes to a wider understanding of the particular racial and gendered dynamics of social and political movements in Aotearoa.</p>

Unfurling routes of self-determination in Aotearoa New Zealand: The Black Women’s Movement 1978 – 1982

<p>Self-determination is a transformative process of ideas and action. It can manifest in a variety of ways but is often dependent on the meeting of likeminded people, the circumstances they find themselves in, and the energy that fuels them into action. This thesis is a theoretical and empirical exploration of Māori and Pasifika women’s self-determination in Aotearoa via a study of the Black Women’s movement from 1978 to 1982. The primary focus is on the complexities, connections and contradictions of their identification with Blackness as part of an assertion of self-determination and Tino Rangatiratanga (Māori self-determination). Using the indigenous concepts of mauri (life force), whanaungatanga (familial relationships) and the koru (unfurling koru frond), this research shows how their Black identification was an important catalyst for a particular type of self-determination, asserted within the political landscape of both the public and private spheres. Black women often negotiated spaces of activism, making their struggles central to, and an example of, the core values that drive anticolonial activist politics. This investigation adds to current Māori activist literature, by addressing the largely ignored solidarity between Māori and Pasifika women within anticolonial activist movements of the era. Overall, the thesis contributes to a wider understanding of the particular racial and gendered dynamics of social and political movements in Aotearoa.</p>

Intersectionality and the Struggle for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: An Analysis of UN Discursive Patterns

<p>This thesis makes the normative argument that intersectionality should be taken seriously by the United Nations in their efforts to address Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). This work suggests that, in spite of widespread recognition of the value of intersectionality for approaching issues of SRHR, the UN has insufficiently adopted the theory into its policy and practice. At the international policy level, intersectionality is nearly absent as a paradigm, yet its central components are dominant within mainstream development discourse. These components include discourses of women's empowerment, human rights, and men's involvement. Drawing on critical feminist and race theory, I argue that a narrow gender vision of SRHR is not sufficient and that intersectionality should be recognized both in discourse and practice by UN agencies. This argument is examined along the parallel tracks of the population movement within the UN system and the evolution of the global women's movement (GWM). This study shows that the UN system has traditionally adopted the approaches and discourses of the global women's movement, as analysed over four decades of UN population movement discourse. However, a shift occurring at the new millennium, as well as significant political barriers barring a discussion of race and racism, have led to a break in this relationship, damaging the take-up of GWM discourse. The conclusion drawn from this argument is that SRHR is an intersectional issue and the new and emerging intersectional paradigm must be adopted by the UN in order to effectively address SRHR on a local and global scale.</p>