Transformation of gendered power relations

In this special issue, we bring together papers that speak to feminisms in relation to decolonisation in the discipline of psychology. The six articles and two book reviews address a range of issues: race, citizenship, emancipatory politics, practising decolonial refusal, normalising slippery subjectivity, Islamic anti-patriarchal liberation psychology, and decolonisation of the hijab. In this editorial we outline the papers’ contributions to discussions on understanding decolonisation, how feminisms and decolonisation speak to each other, and the implications of the papers for feminist decolonising psychology. Together the papers highlight the importance of undermining the gendered coloniality of power, knowledge and being. The interweaving of feminisms and decolonising efforts can be achieved through: each mutually informing and shaping the other, conducting intersectional analyses, and drawing on transnational feminisms. Guiding principles for feminist decolonising psychology include: undermining the patriarchal colonialist legacy of mainstream psychological science; connecting gendered coloniality with other systems of power such as globalisation; investigating topics that surface the intertwining of colonialist and gendered power relations; using research methods that dovetail with feminist decolonising psychology; and focussing praxis on issues that enable decolonisation. Given the complexities of the coloniality and patriarchy of power-knowledge-being, feminist decolonising psychology may fail. The issues raised in this special issue point to why it mustn’t.

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Problematizing the Postfeminist Gaze: A Critical Exploration of Young Women’s Readings of Gendered Power Relations in Advertising

Journal of Macromarketing ◽

10.1177/0276146720950765 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 40 (4) ◽

pp. 546-562

Author(s):

Alexandra Serra Rome ◽

Stephanie O’Donohoe ◽

Susan Dunnett

Keyword(s):

Gender Inequality ◽

Young Women ◽

Lived Experiences ◽

Power Relations ◽

Media Culture ◽

The Past ◽

Critical Exploration ◽

Gendered Power ◽

Women As Readers ◽

Blind Spots

This article explores young women’s engagements with gendered power relations embedded in advertising. Drawing on four case studies, we demonstrate how their readings of gendered ads are informed by postfeminist discourse, which, for all its contradictions, presents gender inequality as a thing of the past. Specifically, we illustrate and theorize the problematic workings of a postfeminist gaze directed at both models in ads and young women as readers of ads, with judgements shaped by postfeminist ideals and blind spots concerning intersections of gender, class, and race. We contribute to macromarketing scholarship by (1) illustrating how, in the context of gendered ads and young American women, gendered power relations and a postfeminist sensibility are both produced by and productive of gendered readers; and (2) highlighting the insidious nature and limitations of this sensibility informing young women’s lived experiences, engagements with media culture, and position in society.

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The gendered power relations of action learning: a critical analysis of women’s reflections on a leadership development programme

Human Resource Development International ◽

10.1080/13678868.2014.928137 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 17 (4) ◽

pp. 416-437 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Valerie Stead

Keyword(s):

Leadership Development ◽

Critical Analysis ◽

Power Relations ◽

Action Learning ◽

Development Programme ◽

Gendered Power

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The Melancholy of Faith

10.5406/illinois/9780252039621.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jermaine Singleton

Keyword(s):

Social Construction ◽

Great Depression ◽

Power Relations ◽

Ritual Practice ◽

The Great Depression ◽

The Social ◽

Gender Hierarchy ◽

Gendered Power

This chapter addresses the question of how unresolved racial grief works through the demands of capital, racialization, and sacred ritual practice to enact a gender hierarchy. It thinks through James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), to explore how testifying serves as a technology of black patriarchy—a ritual that arises out of the need for racial and economic redemption yet unfolds within and propagates gendered power relations. It examines how the content and structure of Baldwin's Bildungsroman, set in Harlem's Pentecostal community during the Great Depression, allegorizes the conversion of John Grimes, who embodies the “weak, feminine flesh” of his matrilineal line that is sacrificed to secure his “manchild” status of salvation. The chapter is punctuated by a section that situates Baldwin's novel as a form of sexual testifying on the part of Baldwin himself. In doing so, it places Baldwin's novel in conversation with its dramatic sequel, The Amen Corner (1954), to explore how both texts anticipate and extend queer theoretical conversations about the social construction of black, gay subject-formations.

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(Out)classed women: contemporary Chicana writers on inequitable gendered power relations

Choice Reviews Online ◽

10.5860/choice.38-4909 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 38 (09) ◽

pp. 38-4909-38-4909

Keyword(s):

Power Relations ◽

Gendered Power

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Victimization and Asymmetric Gendered Power Relations: A Linguistic Investigation of Harassment Complaints Registered in Lahore

Pakistan Journal of Women's Studies: Alam-e-Niswan ◽

10.46521/pjws.027.01.0037 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Umara Shaheen ◽

María Isabel Maldonado García

Keyword(s):

Social Transformation ◽

Power Relations ◽

Theoretical Perspective ◽

Grammatical Structure ◽

Linguistic Features ◽

Gender Ideologies ◽

Gender Oppression ◽

The Status ◽

Gendered Power ◽

Status Of Women

This paper presents an investigation of the linguistic choices employed in harassment complaints submitted to the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women and four police stations located in Lahore during 2017-2018. In a patriarchal society such as Pakistan’s, where a woman’s honour epitomizes the whole family’s honour (Atakav 2015, 52; Sharlach 2008, 96), sexual harassment, a stigmatizing issue is hardly ever reported (Ali and Kramar 2015, 241). This paper, using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis’s (Lazar, 2005, 2007) theoretical perspective of asymmetrical gendered power relations mirrored in harassment complaints, explores the form and severity of harassing practices which had prompted women in Lahore to report them. In order to unwrap the complex interplay of gender and power, linguistic features of the complaints are examined through Fairclough’s text analysis (1989, 1992), the first dimension of the 3D model which explores lexical choices such as adjectives, adverbs, culturally informed metaphors and metaphorical extensions, which are embedded in grammatical structure exemplified through transitivity analysis. In this paper, harassment complaints are analysed as important documents invested with socio-cultural gender ideologies that underline the need for dismantling gender oppression to achieve social transformation.

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Emancipation without Utopia: Subjection, Modernity, and the Normative Claims of Feminist Critical Theory

Hypatia ◽

10.1111/hypa.12160 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 513-529 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Amy Allen

Keyword(s):

Critical Theory ◽

Feminist Theory ◽

Michel Foucault ◽

Power Relations ◽

Diagnostic Analysis ◽

Gendered Power ◽

Depth And Complexity ◽

Paradox Of Power

Feminist theory needs both explanatory‐diagnostic and anticipatory‐utopian moments in order to be truly critical and truly feminist. However, the explanatory‐diagnostic task of analyzing the workings of gendered power relations in all of their depth and complexity seems to undercut the very possibility of emancipation on which the anticipatory‐utopian task relies. In this paper, I take this looming paradox as an invitation to rethink our understanding of emancipation and its relation to the anticipatory‐utopian dimensions of critique, asking what conception of emancipation is compatible with a complex explanatory‐diagnostic analysis of contemporary gender domination as it is intertwined and entangled with race, class, sexuality, and empire. I explore this question through an analysis of two specific debates in which the paradoxical relationship between power and emancipation emerges in particularly salient and seemingly intractable forms: debates over subjection and modernity. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that a negativistic conception of emancipation offers the best way for feminist critical theory to transform the paradox of power and emancipation into a productive tension that can fuel critique.

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