Biblio

Recently, many women’s movements in Brazil sought internet as means of expression and claim, and held campaigns of national and international impact through it, disseminating information using the hashtags #meuamigosecreto (#mysecretsanta) and #meuprimeiroassédio (#myfirstharassment) to denounce situations of various types of harassment they have experienced. The authors of this study aimed to identify which are the elements that influence the intention of women’s participation in online feminist movements by surveying 185 Brazilian women who took part in the #meuamigosecreto campaign. The survey provides relevant information for better understanding of feminist movements online, demonstrating that the participants believe that the campaigns strengthen the feminist movement, assist in raising awareness of men about their macho attitudes, can result in a decrease of cases of violence against women and can contribute to the debate on violence against women.

This paper argues for a conceptualisng denial of abortion as the patriarchal policing of women’s bodies and their sexuality. The authors briefly review international trends regarding abortion politics, including many thousands of abortion related deaths, injuries and loss of fertility, and then analyze women’s access to abortion in two countries, the United States and Bangladesh, which represent two very different contexts: the developed and developing world. They argue that abortion services are being constrained by misogynistic politics that deny women control over their bodies. Finally, the paper reviews recent international efforts to establish abortion rights in the context of human rights. In particular, a recent United Nation’s report describes moves to recriminalise both contraception and abortion in the U.S. and Europe as the deliberate denial of medically available and necessary services and hence a form of “torture.”

In the last decade of the Cold War, during the 1980s, the Peace Movement in Vancouver, BC, gained an unprecedented amount of traction. However, was short-lived as peace activists dwindled in the 1990s and beyond. In this article Christine Kim explores what were the factors that caused the peace movement in Vancouver to fail and whether its legacy is one that supports the value of political activism as a powerful agent for change. The author interviews students, professors, and activists from the Vancouver Peace Movement of the 1980s in an hour-long radio documentary.

By taking into consideration the impact of social and political unrest and conflicts over natural resources and the environment on the lives and livelihoods of Thai women, this paper proposes four areas through which gender issues can be strategically politicized and based on feminist principles and approaches: 1) Public communication through social media to deconstruct gender mystification; 2) Educational programs to uncover intersectional strife (e.g., involving gender, national origin and class) in care work from a feminist perspective; 3) Application of gender diversity as an analytical framework for sustainable national economic and social development policy-making; 4) Creation of spaces for women’s political participation and for legitimizing women’s political participation outside the formal political system to ensure women’s right to self-determination as dignified members of society.

Review of the reasons behind the choice by the Chinese publishing company People’s Cultural Publishing House to translate Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book with the title ‘The Rights of Women’ rather than ‘We Should All Be Feminists’. Critics argue that the problem with the word ‘feminist’ lies in its organising for the cause, while the word ‘right’ reproduces the contemporary governmental discourse that emphasizes the rights conceded and the rule of law imposed from above, thus reproducing a patriarchal scheme on the portrayal of the book.

Since the protests against the use of nuclear energy in the 1980s, civil disobedience is part of German society. The author claims that this kind of resistance shouldn't be confused with the right to resist. Civil disobedience has certain stringent criteria that have to be fulfilled, and should moreover be an exception in a democracy founded on the rule of law and the principle of representation.

This anthology assembles two decades of work initiated by SisterSong Women of Color Health Collective, creators of the human rights-based 'reproductive justice' framework designed to move beyond polarised pro-choice/pro-life debates. Rooted in Black feminism and built on intersecting identities, this framework asserts a woman's right to have children or not, and that of parents to provide for the children they do have.

Reconstructs the history of female-oriented societies by retracing sacred feminine art or ‘Venus Art’ in order to retrieve women friendly egalitarian cultures with particular attention to East Asia. See also https://www.themonsoonproject.org/feminism-in-the-asia-pacific/

Scholar-activists Loretta Ross and Ricki Solinger provide an intersectional analysis of race, class, and gender politics and focus on the experiences of women of colour. They use a human rights analysis to show how the discussion around ‘reproductive justice’ differs significantly from the pro-choice/anti-abortion arguments that have long dominated the debate. They argue that reproductive justice is a political movement for reproductive rights and social justice, and highlight the complex web of structural obstacles facing women of different background.

Reproductive justice activists have used the concept of ‘intersectionality’ to promote one of the most important shifts in reproductive politics. The Combahee River Collective, twelve Black women working within and outside the pro-choice movement in 1994 coined the term “reproductive justice” to “recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from the sharing and growing consciousness, to a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression.” This paper argues that this concept has linked activists and academics stimulating numerous scholarly articles, new forms of organising by women of colour, and the reorganization of philanthropic foundations. It examines how reproductive justice+e is used as an organising and theoretical framework, and discusses Black patriarchal and feminist theoretical discourses through a reproductive justice lens.

Report on meeting held in conjunction with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature which was part of mobilization around People's Climate march and UN Climate summit in New York City 2014.

Advocates that nuclear disarmament movements develop a strategy to rouse the public from its torpor and shift the agenda of the nuclear powers from nuclear confrontation to a nuclear weapons-free world. He recalls the example set by the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and proposes ways to implement effective strategies today. 

This book focuses on importance of community-based resistance to tackle major national and global issues.  It covers diverse groups and campaigns in the USA, for example against racial injustice, coal mining and claiming workers' rights, and is based on the author’s interviews during her extended journey.

This work examines the role of NGOs in protest against violence and harassment against women. The aim is to show that women are not just victims, but also rational actors, and to inspire courageous and nonviolent responses to harassment.

In this interview, Ibrahim AlHusseini - entrepreneur, documentary producer, and philanthropist - discusses the connection between renewable energy, democracy in the Middle East and feminism. It also elucidates why feminism is important to Middle Eastern men and the factors that contribute to a larger participation of men in women’s struggles for equality.

Although sexual harassment is a worldwide phenomenon, it is noteworthy in Egypt, which recently occupied a top position on the map of sexual harassment on a world scale. In November 2013, Egypt was declared by the Thomson Reuters Foundation as the worst country for women to live in within the Arab World, when compared to twenty-two other Arab countries, largely because of its female sexual harassment rates. The United Nations Population Fund declared Egypt as ranking “second in the world after Afghanistan in terms of this issue.” In the years following the 2011 revolution, the nature of sexual harassment in Egyptian society was transformed from a hidden phenomenon to an overtly prevalent social epidemic. This study argues that the “weaponization” of sexual harassment is a common ground where class struggles, state policies, and women’s empowerment intertwine in post-revolutionary Egyptian society.

Three women were appointed to politically powerful and historically significant positions in Japan in 2016. Koike Yuriko became the first female governor of Tokyo, Renho Murata became the leader of the opposition party, the Democratic Party, and Inada Tomomi became the Minister of Defence. Despite these gains, Japanese politics can be a hostile place for women. Japan's national legislative assembly has the lowest representation of women among OECD countries, and harassment of women in politics is common. Situating Japan within the emerging ‘Violence Against Women in Politics’ (VAWP) literature, the author draws on a 2014 survey of women politicians about their experiences of sexual harassment as well as interviews with individual women politicians. Harassment is a 'hidden' problem due to ineffective legislation and a lack of awareness of what forms it takes. The author argues that the first step in combating sexual harassment of women in politics in Japan is to make it visible.

This book addresses a major problem of rape and rape culture on campus, revealed by media coverage of ‘rape chants’ at Saint Mary’s University, misogynistic Facebook posts from Dalhousie University’s dental school, and high-profile incidents of sexual violence at other Canadian universities. University administrations were called to account for their cover-ups and misguided responses. Quinlan explores the causes and consequences of sexual violence on campus as well as strategies for its elimination, drawing together original case studies, empirical research, and theoretical writings by scholars and community and campus activists. Topics covered are the costs of campus sexual violence on students and university communities, the efficacy of existing university sexual assault policies and institutional responses, and historical and contemporary forms of activism associated with campus sexual violence.

Explains how Chinese women understand their identities and feminism in the new media age and how, as Jiang argues, they present and shape ideas about feminism and gender issues in the current socio-political context.

This chapter explores how to measure quantitatively women’s social movements. Drawing on previous qualitative and quantitative studies of politically influential social movements addressing women’s rights across developing countries, the authors examine what aspects of women’s collective action can create a meaningful variable. The chapter concludes with a call for new methods to measure women’s movements, to pinpoint the circumstances that lead to mobilization, the intricacies of women’s movements, and the ways women’s collective action leads to women’s political empowerment and gender equality, both in the developing world and a global context.

Chappell, an Iraq War veteran, challenges the myths about violence and nonviolence that prevent people from tackling the basic causes of problems in the US and globally.  He discusses the concept of 'peace literacy', the power and dangers of language, and the need to understand nonviolence better.

The spread of contemporary roller derby presents an opportunity to examine the ways sport can act as a form of feminist intervention. This article draws on a qualitative case study of a roller derby league in China, made up predominantly of expatriate workers, to explore some of the possibilities roller derby presents in activating global forms of feminist participatory action.

This chapter provides an overview of Brazilian feminist and women's movements since the 1970s, showing how dialogues with the state began and eventually led to the establishment of Women's Policy Agencies at different governmental levels, as well as in the different branches of government. It demonstrates that, despite these setbacks, state feminism in its participatory form continues to be an important instrument in the fight for gender equality in Brazil. The chapter deals with a periodization of feminist struggles in Brazil, tracing the emergence and consolidation of state feminism and the challenges it encountered up to more recent years. It examines how state feminism in Brazil has furthered women's struggles in combating their underrepresentation in formal politics, confronting violence against women, and advancing state support for the exercise of women's reproductive rights, focusing on the legalization of abortion.

This thesis focuses on the (neglected) role of civil society in both maintaining the existing nuclear weapons system globally and in challenging it. Adopting Antonio Gramsci's theory of civil society, Mulas also draws on critical theoretical approaches to nuclear studies and security to challenge the dominant nuclear discourse. The thesis explores how civil society actors calling for forms of nuclear disarmament can either accept the dominant discourse of deterrence or pose a radical challenge to it. In Gramscian terms the former groups unwittingly act as part of the hegemonic apparatus, the latter constitute a 'counter-hegemonic' opposition.

Urges external support for groups trying to help people devastated by war and also to create the organizational basis for a better future. Stephan notes the role of women-led 'peace circles' publicizing atrocities, promoting education and psychiatric help for refugee children, and planning for the future. See also: Al Shami, Leila, 'Syria: Women Continue Resistance against Fascism, Imperialism and Patriarchy', Open Democracy, 5 January 2017. Describes a young woman taking risks to communicate with the outside world before the fall of Aleppo, and then discusses the wider role of women in the opposition. There are also a number of documentary films on aspects of resistance and constructive action inside Syria: '"Islamic State's" Most Wanted', BBC World Service, July 2016 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qzk9g) An account of citizen journalists in Raqaa (capital of the IS Syrian caliphate) taking appalling risks (and sometime suffering death and attacks on their families) to send online reports to the outside world.  Hussam Eesa, who managed to escape Raqaa when he knew arrest was imminent in 2014, is interviewed for the programme. 'Syria's Disappeared: The Case against Assad', Channel 4, March 2017 (https://www.channel4.com/news/syrias-disappeared) Reveals how prisoners in one of Assad's prisons smuggled out lists of names of those detained.  They were written in blood on scraps of material, which any prisoner who was released could take out with him. The story is told by Mansour al-Omari, a human rights activist jailed in February 2012, who eventually managed to attain asylum in Sweden. 'The White Helmets', Netflix documentary, February 2017 (upon subscription) A film about the White Helmets (Syrian Civil Defence), who had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and its 3,000 members across Syria. The documentary received an Oscar nomination and fueled controversy.