scholarly journals ‘Malleable Minds’: Women of the Mau Mau

Author(s):  
Rachel Urovitz

In the mid twentieth century, Britain was experiencing the beginnings of decolonization and heightened nationalistic movements from many of its colonial holdings and protectorate territories. Specifically, in 1952 the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya highlighted colonial desires to be independent and exiled from the Empire. Simultaneously, the case study of the Mau Mau also shows the British government attempting to preserve the spirit of Empire. Continuing to demonstrate their motivations and purpose as the leading global imperial power in Kenya, the British exhibited their self-imposed paternalistic ‘duty’, as civilizing initiatives persisted. Critically analyzing the roles of female Mau Mau members in the rebellion demonstrates the cultural and ideological discrepancies between British and Kenyan conceptions of traditional gender roles and further, how British preconceived notions of gendered stereotypes provided an opportunity for Mau Mau women to exhibit significant political influence and agency that arguably contributed to the end of the rebellion (1956) and the eventual independence of Kenya (1963). Due to the contiguity of the crisis and the limited availability of sources on the Mau Mau, this paper seeks to shed light on the intersection between the perceptions and realities of Metropolitan and Mau Mau gender roles. Though the rebellion was multi-faceted and can be analyzed for a plethora of historical narratives, focusing specifically on the role female Mau Mau members played in the rebellion demonstrates the clashing British and Kikuyu conceptions of gender roles. Studying the Mau Mau women emphasizes the importance of considering women's roles in history as they factor into broader ideologies of race, politics, and culture, while also showing the shift in western historical approaches that are validating oral histories.

Modern Italy ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Haworth

Celebrity scandals are a useful tool to reveal the pervasiveness of expected ways of behaving within a particular culture or society. Italy of the early 1960s was particularly marked by these kinds of scandals, including that of singer Mina’s pregnancy by Corrado Pani in 1963. This article takes this scandal as a case study to explore how star image in this period in Italy was influenced by the established ideologies that governed social convention, morality, and traditional gender roles. It examines in detail the ways in which the popular press reported on this scandal, using the reports that covered the announcement of the pregnancy and then the birth to cast light on the extent to which the mainstream social values and ideas regarding the status quo and expected ways of behaving for women in Italy during the early 1960s were destabilised and/or reasserted through the star persona of Mina.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 388-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saam Idelji-Tehrani ◽  
Muna Al-Jawad

The existing literature on leadership often describes it within fairly rigid gender roles. Entire models of leadership have been ascribed gendered labels. Shared leadership is, in traditional leadership theory, a feminine model. After observing a National Health Service (NHS) department enacting a shared leadership model, and using ethnography, grounded theory and comics-based research, we decided to explore the relationship between shared leadership and gender stereotypes. We realised our hope was to see a subversion of traditional stereotypes. Our data showed shared leadership overall as a feminine model, with its focus on distribution and compassion. Within the group, a range of gender roles were performed, meaning that the group could represent itself to the outside world as either more masculine or more feminine as required. This was beneficial, as conflict with outsiders was minimised and hence anxiety reduced. However, we noted that within the group, traditional gender roles were not subverted and were probably reinforced. Despite our view that shared leadership has not been an opportunity to resist gender stereotyping within this department, the success of this feminine model may represent a challenge to the prevailing masculine model of leadership within the NHS.


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Nancy M. Arenberg

As a transnational Israeli writer, Chochana Boukhobza delves into the complex problem of crossing borders in Un été à Jérusalem (1986), a text which focuses on the unnamed protagonist's trip from Paris to visit her family during the summer months in Jerusalem. Although the narrator had resided in Israel previously, she is forced to grapple with her ‘Otherness’ in Jerusalem, especially as a Jew originally from Tunisia. The narrator's crisis of exile is defined by her sense of disconnection to her family, the city, Israeli politics, and women's traditional roles. In this essay, particular emphasis will be placed on the protagonist's penchant for profaning Jewish cultural and religious practices, which is articulated through a series of corporeal transgressions. To launch this revolt against the patriarchal structure of the nation in Israel, the narrator rejects the submissive role assigned to Jewish-Tunisian women, and, in so doing, dismantles traditional gender roles.


Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Blake

Why do people participate in controversial symbolic events that drive wedges between groups and occasionally spark violence? This book examines this question through an in-depth case study of Northern Ireland. Protestant organizations perform over 2,500 parades across Northern Ireland each year. Protestants tend to see the parades as festive occasions that celebrate Protestant history and culture. Catholics, however, tend to see them as hateful, intimidating, and triumphalist. As a result, parades have been a major source of conflict in the years since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. This book examines why, given the often negative consequences, people choose to participate in these parades. Drawing on theories from the study of contentious politics and the study of ritual, the book argues that paraders are more interested in the benefits intrinsic to participation in a communal ritual than the external consequences of their action. The book presents analysis of original quantitative and qualitative data to support this argument and to test it against prominent alternative explanations. Interview, survey, and ethnographic data are also used to explore issues central to parade participation, including identity expression, commemoration, tradition, the pleasures of participation, and communicating a message to outside audiences. The book additionally examines a paradox at the center of parading: while most observers see parades as political events, the participants do not. Altogether, the book offers a new perspective on politics and culture in the aftermath of ethnic violence.


Author(s):  
Sara Moslener

For evangelical adolescents living in the United States, the material world of commerce and sexuality is fraught with danger. Contemporary movements urge young people to embrace sexual purity and abstinence before marriage and eschew the secular pressures of modern life. And yet, the sacred text that is used to authorize these teachings betrays evangelicals’ long-standing ability to embrace the material world for spiritual purposes. Bibles marketed to teenage girls, including those produced by and for sexual purity campaigns, make use of prevailing trends in bible marketing. By packaging the message of sexual purity and traditional gender roles into a sleek modern day apparatus, American evangelicals present female sexual restraint as the avant-garde of contemporary, evangelical orthodoxy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1671
Author(s):  
Maura A. E. Pilotti

In many societies across the globe, females are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM fields), although they are reported to have higher grades in high school and college than males. The present study was guided by the assumption that the sustainability of higher education critically rests on the academic success of both male and female students under conditions of equitable educational options, practices, and contents. It first assessed the persistence of familiar patterns of gender bias (e.g., do competencies at enrollment, serving as academic precursors, and academic performance favor females?) in college students of a society in transition from a gender-segregated workforce with marked gender inequalities to one whose aims at integrating into the global economy demand that women pursue once forbidden careers thought to be the exclusive domain of men. It then examined how simple indices of academic readiness, as well as preferences for fields fitting traditional gender roles, could predict attainment of key competencies and motivation to graduate (as measured by the average number of credits completed per year) in college. As expected, females had a higher high school GPA. Once in college, they were underrepresented in a major that fitted traditional gender roles (interior design) and over-represented in one that did not fit (business). Female students’ performance and motivation to graduate did not differ between the male-suited major of business and the female-suited major of interior design. Male students’ performance and motivation to graduate were higher in engineering than in business, albeit both majors were gender-role consistent. Although high school GPA and English proficiency scores predicted performance and motivation for all, preference for engineering over business also predicted males’ performance and motivation. These findings offered a more complex picture of patterns of gender bias, thereby inspiring the implementation of targeted educational interventions to improve females’ motivation for and enrollment in STEM fields, nowadays increasingly available to them, as well as to enhance males’ academic success in non-STEM fields such as business.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110326
Author(s):  
Chinenye Amonyeze ◽  
Stella Okoye-Ugwu

With the global #Metoo movement yet to arrive in Nigeria, Jude Dibia’s Unbridled reflects an emblematic moment for the underrepresented to occupy their stories and make their voices heard. The study analyzes patriarchy’s complicated relationship with the Nigerian girl child, significantly reviewing the inherent prejudices in patriarchy’s power hierarchies and how radical narratives explore taboo topics like incest and sexual violence. Contextualizing the concepts of hypersexualization and implicit bias to put in perspective how women, expected to be the gatekeepers of sex, are forced to navigate competing allegiances while remaining submissive and voiceless, the article probes the struggles of sexual victims and how hierarchies in a patriarchal society exacerbate their affliction through a culture of silence. Arguing that Dibia’s Unbridled confronts the narrative of silence in Nigerian fiction, the article explores ways the author empowers gender by challenging social values and traditional gender roles, underscoring gender dynamics and the problematic nature of prevalent bias against the feminine gender in Nigeria.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Hunter ◽  
Erika Maxwell ◽  
Fern Brunger

This commentary offers an explanation for how and why the Dalhousie Dentistry scandal could occur in a society and time where traditional gender roles are seemingly being eradicated. We use Foucault’s modes of objectification, applied to an analysis of the use of “manhood acts” and in relation to the hidden curriculum, to argue that when women threaten the authority of men in health professions, men may subconsciously look for ways to re-exert an unequal and gendered subject-object binary.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-195
Author(s):  
John A. Robertson

The role of stigma in limiting reproductive rights has long hovered in the air. Paula Abrams has sorted through the concept and shown how it operates in two major areas of procreative liberty — having a child through surrogacy and avoiding childbirth by abortion. Her paper is especially useful for showing how legal change initially dilutes stigma but may reinstall it with post-legalization regulation.Abrams argues that both abortion and surrogacy are stigmatized because they deviate from traditional gender roles and social expectations about pregnancy and maternity. Past restrictions have rested on a common legal and cultural paradigm of the good mother: a woman who conceives, carries her child to term, and then rears the child. Indeed, as she later argues, evidence of stigma surrounding a practice is “relevant to determining whether laws regulating abortion or surrogacy are based on impermissible stereotyping.”


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