Male Feminists Promote Gender Equality in Islamic Moderation Perspective

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between the role of men in supporting the feminist movement and moderate Islamic teachings among college students in Indonesia. This study used a quantitative approach by distributing questionnaires to 625 respondents who were randomly selected. The independent variable used, namely religious moderation, was measured using four indicators: a sense of nationalism (X1), tolerance (X2), anti-violence (X3), and accommodative attitudes towards local culture (X4). This study examined multiple linear regression analysis to test whether the four problems in Islamic moderation were related to student attitudes towards male involvement in feminism. The results suggested that these four independent variables have a positive and significant effect on student attitudes towards the active role of men in supporting the gender equality movement. Furthermore, an accommodative attitude towards the local culture and a sense of nationalism were known to have the greatest and smallest effects, namely 0.28 and 0.15 respectively. These results indicate that moderate Muslims tend to have a greater acceptance of male feminists. Then, the results also indicated that Muslim students who practised moderate Islamic teachings had realized the importance of male involvement in feminism.

What does it mean to be a feminist MP? A comparative analysis of the Swedish and Danish parliaments

The issue of whether political interests are gendered, and if so, how, has been a recurrent theme in research. While there have been several attempts recently to address gendered political interests theoretically, the central concept of feminism has not been explored in any depth in this context. This article uses unique data pertaining to self-identification as a “feminist” MP, and explores how it relates to gender, party and certain policy issues previously connected to women in Sweden and Denmark. The two neighboring countries both have a high representation of women, but while the Swedish government called itself “feminist,” this was unthinkable in the Danish case. Our main finding is that in both countries male feminist MPs deviate from their female counterparts by not supporting “acting for women” which indicates a separate and gendered understanding of what being a male feminist implies. However, no strong association addressing intrinsic feminists male concerns such as parental leave, was found. Another possibility could be that male feminists refrain from taking agency from females, what the “acting for” option could imply. We conclude that the concept of “acting for women” needs to be abducted from its central stance in feminism as a category of representation to mirror the multifaceted contemporary landscape.