scholarly journals Women’s Issues: African Writers Fighting Portuguese Colonialism in the 1950s

Author(s):  
Noemi Alfieri

This essay approaches the literary production by female intellectuals who opposed Portuguese colonialism in Africa, recognising their active role in history, as well as the cultural and political processes that influenced their writing and its repercussions. Experiencing multiple forms of subalternity – of class, race and gender – women like Alda Espírito Santo, Alda Lara, Noémia de Sousa Deolinda Rodrigues and Manuela Margarido were committed to the creation of new ways of writing and forms of conceiving the world. Playing a fundamental role in the literary, political and cultural environment of the second half of the 20th century, they circulated in spaces in which they questioned male hegemony, discussing gender issues and exercising multiple forms of resistance. This article will consider how the demands of women in the process of political decolonisation have often been reduced to the label of ‘women’s issues’, the idea of unification of struggles having been privileged instead.

Hypatia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 927-934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Intemann ◽  
Emily S. Lee ◽  
Kristin McCartney ◽  
Shireen Roshanravan ◽  
Alexa Schriempf

Thanks in large part to the record of scholarship fostered by Hypatia, feminist philosophers are now positioned not just as critics of the canon, but as innovators advancing uniquely feminist perspectives for theorizing about the world. As relatively junior feminist scholars, the five of us were called upon to provide some reflections on emerging trends in feminist philosophy and to comment on its future. Despite the fact that we come from diverse subfields and philosophical traditions, four common aims emerged in our collaboration as central to the future of feminist philosophies. We seek to: 1) challenge universalist and essentialist frameworks without ceding to relativism; 2) center coloniality and embodiment in our analyses of the intermeshed realities of race and gender by shifting from oppression in the abstract to concrete cosmologies and struggles, particularly those of women of color and women of colonized communities across the globe; 3) elaborate the materialities of thought, being, and community that must succeed atomistic conceptions of persons as disembodied, individually constituted, and autonomous; 4) demonstrate what is distinctive and valuable about feminist philosophy, while fighting persistent marginalization within the discipline. In our joint musings here, we attempt to articulate how future feminist philosophies might advance these aims, as well as some of the challenges we face.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-47
Author(s):  
Comfort Yemisi Afolabi

The sufferings of women in the society and other acts of discrimination against women resulted in the rise of women or feminist movements worldwide especially in the Northern countries of the globe. As a result of the dehumanization of women in most communities of the world, many activists and women movements evolved to proffer solutions to women and gender issues. This paper examined the contributions of international, regional, national and local women’s movements to development. The paper delved into the Waves of Feminism which made various changes and resulted in major freedom and development for women in education, family life, health wise, employment and politics. It looked at the importance of women to economic development. Various women’s movements and networks were discussed. Challenges of these women’s movements were identified and recommendations were made. The paper employed secondary sources for information for the study.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Johanna Bond

Intersectionality theory posits that aspects of identity, such as race and gender, are mutually constitutive and intersect to create unique experiences of discrimination and subordination. Perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflict, for example, often target women on the basis of both gender and ethnicity. When human rights actors intervene on behalf of those harmed by sexual violence in armed conflict, they must understand the intersectional complexity of those violations. Global Intersectionality and Contemporary Human Rights examines the influence of intersectionality theory on human rights law in the modern era and its evolution as a theoretical framework in the United States and around the world. This volume draws on feminist theory, critical race theory, and human rights jurisprudence to argue that scholars and activists have underutilized intersectionality theory in the global discourse of human rights. This chapter introduces readers to the book’s argument that the United Nations and other human rights organizations must do more to actively embrace intersectionality as an analytical framework for the promotion of human rights around the world.


Author(s):  
Beth Reingold

The concluding chapter summarizes the main findings and highlights the book’s contributions to the study of gender, race, and representation and the development of intersectionality as an analytic framework. It reviews, chapter by chapter, the many ways in which the election, activity, and impact of legislative women of color matter, not just for women and minorities, but especially for those situated at the intersections of multiple forms of disempowerment and misrepresentation. Examining politics from the perspective of women of color, this book demonstrates the many complex ways race and gender together shape democratic institutions and the representational opportunities and challenges they present. Little of what the book reveals, however, would have been possible without the critical intersectional approach informing it. Thus, Chapter 7 concludes with a call for more intersectional approaches to investigating questions, both old and new, about political representation and categories of difference.


2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 895-918
Author(s):  
MARISSA LÓPEZ

In March and April of 2008, emo youth in Mexican and Latin American metropoles were vulnerable to violent, physical attacks, which the world witnessed, aghast, via YouTube. Journalists, pundits, and cultural commentators around the globe wondered, first, how to define “emo”; second, how to explain its presence in Mexico and Latin America; and third, whence such a violent reaction? This essay tackles those questions, and tries to think through emo to something more than the post-NAFTA angst to which it has been commonly ascribed in the US and Mexican media. Tracing a route from US Chicano punk and new wave, to Mexico's self-proclaimed emo youth, to Myriam Gurba's short fiction featuring southern California's Chicana dyke-punk communities, I ask how emo travels, and how these highly self-conscious and very public performances of affect speak to the intersections of race and gender in twenty-first-century Latin@ and Latin American youth culture.


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