Feminist Solidarities and Coalitional Identity: The Popular Feminism of the Marcha das Margaridas

The Marcha das Margaridas is a mass mobilization in Brazil led by women’s organizations within rural unions in alliance with other social movements and nongovernmental organizations, including transnational partners such as the World March of Women. The main political subjects are rural working women, a political identity that articulates gender, class, and urban-rural inequalities. These are foundational for the popular feminism of the Marcha. An examination of the Marcha das Margaridas guided by a theoretical discussion of poststructural feminism and postcolonial feminism on the role of political identities in building coalitions reveals that it expands the agenda of popular feminism in its relationship to historical feminist agendas and intersectional feminisms and in its coalition politics with men and the left. A Marcha das Margaridas é uma mobilização de massa no Brasil liderada por organismos de mulheres dentro de sindicatos rurais em aliança com outros movimentos sociais e organizações não governamentais (ONGs), incluindo parceiros transnacionais como a Marcha Mundial das Mulheres. Os principais sujeitos políticos são as mulheres trabalhadoras rurais, uma identidade política que articula as desigualdades de gênero, classe e urbano-rurais. Estes são fundamentais para o feminismo popular da Marcha. Um estudo da Marcha das Margaridas guiado por uma discussão teórica do feminismo pós-estrutural e do feminismo pós-colonial sobre o papel das identidades políticas na construção de coalizões revela que ela expande a agenda do feminismo popular em sua relação com agendas feministas históricas e feminismos intersetoriais, como também em sua coalizão política com os homens e a esquerda.

Damsels in distress: Discourses of entrepreneurship in management textbooks

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into the discursive foundations of entrepreneurial identity for women in Canada by examining the social positions, representations and spaces they take in introductory business textbooks. We ask three questions: (1) What issues of power and discourses related to gender are subsumed in Canadian textbooks? (2) In what way is gender represented in texts of entrepreneurship in Canadian management education? (3) How are women portrayed in entrepreneurship texts? The data that we draw upon comes from 13 Canadian management textbooks that have been used in introductory business courses to teach students about the functions of business. By narrowing in on content in entrepreneurship education, we use poststructural feminism as a lens to interrogate gendered discourses that influence what and how students are taught about the ideals of entrepreneurship in undergraduate business programs in Canada. Our findings suggest that the entrepreneurship texts studied were overly gendered in masculine terms, serving to privilege the experience of male business while simultaneously marginalizing the representation of women entrepreneurs. We argue that marginalizing women in textbooks may form barriers to their interest and participation in entrepreneurial pursuits, and thereby call on scholars and practitioners to reconsider the importance of equality in materials used in the classroom.

Grill Guys and Drive-Thru Girls: Discourses of Gender in Young People’s Part-Time Work

We engage with poststructural feminism to examine how 32 young workers in Ontario and British Columbia perceived, replicated, navigated, and challenged gendered discourses. We discuss three related emerging themes. First, girls positioned themselves and other girls who work as “go-getters,” resonating with “can-do” girlhood narratives. Second, many participants engaged in and embraced gender-typical work, while others raised critical, feminist concerns. Third, some participants experienced diversions from gender-typical work, and their reflections both reproduced and challenged dominant gender norms. We demonstrate that contradictory discourses of gender, gender inequality, and growing up shape young people’s early work experiences in multiple ways.

Embodied Disbelief: Poststructural Feminist Atheism

“I quite rightly pass for an atheist,” Jacques Derrida announces in Circumfession. Grace Jantzen's suggestion that the poststructuralist critique of modernity can also be trained on atheism helps us make sense of this playfully cryptic statement: although Derrida sympathizes with the “idea” of atheism, he is wary of the modern brand of atheism, with its insistence on rationally arranging—straightening out—religion. In this paper, I will argue that poststructural feminism, with its focus on embodied epistemology, offers a way to re‐explain Derrida's “I rightly pass,” and also to carry it forward. Poststructural feminist atheism leads us through Derrida to an embodied disbelief drawing on three dimensions of poststructural feminism: feminist epistemology and material feminism, relationality, and affect theory.

Identity, sex and 'women's writing' in French poststructural feminism

The paper discusses political implications of the feminist revision of psychoanalysis in the works of major representatives of 1970s French poststructuralism, and their current significance. The influence and modifications of Lacan's interpretation of imaginary structure of the Ego and linguistic structure of the unconscious on explanations of the relations between gender and identity developed by Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and H?l?ne Cixous are examined. French poststructuralist feminism, developing in the 1970s, was the second major current in French feminism of the times, different from and in a way opposed to Simone de Beauvoir's approach. While de Beauvoir explores 'women's condition' determined by social and historical circumstances, French feminists of poststructuralist persuasion engage with problems of unconscious psychological structuring of feminine identity, women's psychosexuality, theoretical implications of gendered visions of reality, especially in philosophy, semiology and psychology, as well as opening up new discursive possibilities of women's and feminine self-expression through 'women's writing'. Political implications of their approach have remained controversial to this day. These authors have been criticized for dislocating women's activism into the sphere of language and theory, as well as for reasserting the concept of women's nature. Debates over whether we need the concept of women's nature - and if yes, what kind - and over the relation between theory and political activism, have resulted in the split between the so-called 'essentialist' and 'anti-essentialist' approaches in feminist theory, and the subsequent division into American (non-essentialist) and French (partly labeled as essentialist) strands. The division is an oversimplification and overlooks concrete historical circumstances that produced the divergence between 'materialist' and 'linguistic' currents in France.

Gender Ghosts in McGarry and O'Leary and Representations of the Conflict in Northern Ireland

This article focuses on how ideas about gender function in academic analyses of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Part of the reason for doing this is to explore the paradox afflicting contemporary feminism, namely that in the midst of apparent success feminism still seems largely irrelevant to matters of political significance. A second reason involves a demonstration of the political value of poststructural feminism. To achieve these aims, I first consider the use and political aims of poststructuralist analyses, partly through an analysis of the use of poetry in social scientific analyses. The main site used to demonstrate the functions of gender and the political possibilities of poststructural feminism is John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary's book Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. The sub-title of this book refers to a Robert Graves' poem, ‘In Broken Images’, a poem the authors use to explain their desire to ‘break images’ when explaining the conflict in Northern Ireland. I next reflect on and illustrate how ideas about gender function by focusing primarily on Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. The final section re-considers the paradox of contemporary feminism, suggesting that feminism's own methodologies contribute towards its persistent marginalisation.