Fearing the Other Side

Chapter 4 turns to the reasons why people may hide their political beliefs by looking at the reasons for CWG’s secrecy. This chapter addresses the sociological components of fear—including power and social and economic interdependence—that were at play in the women’s decision to keep their politics a secret. It outlines three types of fear in response to partisan hostility: social, economic, and physical. It recounts the women’s stories of actual retaliation within these categories, as well as the role of personal narrative in fueling fear and building camaraderie. This chapter provides evidence that intensifying polarization has made political identity a source of not only social persecution, but of economic and physical persecution as well.

Obstetric Violence in Their Own Words: How Women in Mexico and South Africa Expect, Experience, and Respond to Violence

This article, based on ethnographic research in Mexico and South Africa, presents two central arguments about obstetric violence: (a) structural inequalities across diverse global sites are primarily linked to gender and lead to similar patterns of obstetric violence, and (b) ethnography is a powerful method to give voice to women's stories. Connecting these two arguments is a temporal model to understand how women across the world come to expect, experience, and respond to obstetric violence—that is, before, during, and after the encounter. This temporal approach is a core feature of ethnography, which requires long-term immersion and attention to context.

Childbirth: a Momentous Occasion Muslim Women's Childbirth Experiences

<p>This thesis explores the perception of three Muslim women’s experience of childbirth, in a setting surrounded by health professionals who largely have little understanding of their needs and experience of being in the world. The women’s stories reveal that giving birth in a cross-cultural setting is stressful. The women had to adjust to an environment which challenged their beliefs and values, in one case with no extended family or cultural support. This stress is long lasting as evidenced in the women’s stories. Various forms of narrative such as a letter, excerpts from conversations, and interviews, have been used in presenting this research, in order to illuminate Muslim women’s birthing experiences particularly to health colleagues in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Given the opportunity to tell their story, all the women highlighted both the positive and negative aspects of their birth experiences. Excerpts from the narratives of Khadija, Ayesha, and Amina, describe the reality of their experiences. The overarching theme in this thesis reveals the uniqueness of each woman’s story. This thesis identifies situations that heightened the vulnerability of the women. It concludes by identifying recommendations and reading material for nurses and midwives in education or practice to become informed, so that 20,000 Muslims in Aotearoa-New Zealand may receive an acceptable level of culturally safe practice.</p>

Childbirth: a Momentous Occasion Muslim Women's Childbirth Experiences

<p>This thesis explores the perception of three Muslim women’s experience of childbirth, in a setting surrounded by health professionals who largely have little understanding of their needs and experience of being in the world. The women’s stories reveal that giving birth in a cross-cultural setting is stressful. The women had to adjust to an environment which challenged their beliefs and values, in one case with no extended family or cultural support. This stress is long lasting as evidenced in the women’s stories. Various forms of narrative such as a letter, excerpts from conversations, and interviews, have been used in presenting this research, in order to illuminate Muslim women’s birthing experiences particularly to health colleagues in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Given the opportunity to tell their story, all the women highlighted both the positive and negative aspects of their birth experiences. Excerpts from the narratives of Khadija, Ayesha, and Amina, describe the reality of their experiences. The overarching theme in this thesis reveals the uniqueness of each woman’s story. This thesis identifies situations that heightened the vulnerability of the women. It concludes by identifying recommendations and reading material for nurses and midwives in education or practice to become informed, so that 20,000 Muslims in Aotearoa-New Zealand may receive an acceptable level of culturally safe practice.</p>

Women's stories and knowledge of wildlife and conservation practice in northern Tanzania and South India

Around the world, Indigenous peoples have stories about wildlife that reflect knowledge and feelings about animals and their relationship to humans. Different people's experiences speak to the variety of interactions people have with animals in the spaces where humans and non-human animals live and interact. These stories are often told by women, reflecting the ways in which gender mediates human–environment relations. Yet gendered differences in knowledge and experience are rarely addressed in wildlife conservation research and action. Even community-based conservation efforts often ignore or marginalize the knowledge and experiences of women. We present women's stories and experiences of wildlife from Maasai communities in Tanzania and Soliga communities in India. We show that women have the desire and knowledge to participate in conservation decision-making but are currently marginalized from community conservation practice. We argue that including women in research and action is key for successful community-based wildlife conservation.

Theorising from global south literature for praxis: a transnational approach to chameleon feminism

This article challenges the historical directionality of women’s knowledge and experience from the global north to the global south. It situates Moroccan feminist literature by Leila Abouzeid and Malika Oufkir within a transnational comparative approach to argue that reversing such flows – northward instead of southward – enables defamiliarising feminist theory as we know it to refamiliarise it for feminist praxis. Drawing on Obioma Nnaemeka’s African feminist philosophy, the article engages in a literary analysis to articulate a theory of ‘chameleon feminism’ for illuminating how global south women’s stories connect rooms, arenas and fields for a praxis of resilience against authoritarianism.

CommentsTrina Grillo: Productive Rage

Trina Grillo’s article was powerful because it conveyed a woman’s anger, rising from deep inside the field. Writing as a woman of mixed race and as a mediator, Grillo critiqued mediation by enlisting its own methods: she drew her insights from behavioral and social sciences and from women’s stories of lived experience. Grillo wrote that mandated mediation in the intimate field of family law could trap a woman in an impossible dilemma. Forced to face her opponent at the informal mediation table, she could be “good”—cooperative, responsible, and calm. Or she could be “bad”—bitter, vengeful, and raging. Either way, silent or screaming, the woman was losing her voice....