Portrayal of Female Violence in the Bible: the Stories of Jael and Judith

This article offers an analysis of the biblical stories about two heroines: Jael and Judith who save their people by killing the foreign generals. Both stories narrate critical historical situations, namely Jael’s story in Judges 4–5 dates to the XII–X cc. B.C.E. and reflects the ongoing conflict between the twelve tribes of Israel with their neighbors in the land of Canaan, Judith’s story dates to the II c. B.C.E. and reflects the conflict between the Jews and the Seleucid rulers who oppressed the Jewish populace, forced them to practice Hellenistic rituals and abandon the Jewish law and religious practices. Jael invites Sisera, a commander of the Canaanite army of king Jabin, to her tent, gives him milk to drink, and when the man falls asleep, she kills him with a hammer and а tent peg. Judith, a widow from the town of Bethulia, uses her beauty and charm to kill Holofernes, an Assyrian general. First, she gains his trust. Then, when Holofernes drunken falls asleep, she decapitates him in his tent. These texts explicitly show the collapse of the male power and demonstrate the ability of women to step in to save the people. Both heroines are praised by the narrators for their heroism. It is also demonstrated that Jael’s and Judith’s stories have an aim to teach how one may think out of the box. Due to the lack of male capability to solve the problem or, in other words, to protect the people as it is expected according to the patriarchal norms, social roles are shifted, and perception of masculinity and femininity is reеvaluated. The heroic stories of Jael and Judith represent the idea that women can be subjects of history, violence as а means to protect people is not limited to the male domain, and women can save people in critical situations. The violence performed by the women is perceived as an extraordinary act yet necessary and not deviant in the situation.

African Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Socioeconomic and African Hermeneutical Reading

In conversation with David Adamo's Africa in the Bible approach, which investigates the presence of Africa and Africans in Scriptures, this article conducts a synoptic search of the named and unnamed "African" women of the Torah and Nebiim with the aim of probing their socio-economic status. We ask, to what extent does a socioeconomic reading of the portraits of these women - from Hagar to the Queen of Sheba - afford us a glance into the lives of women in antiquity in the geographical location called Africa today, many of whom seemed to enjoy a great degree of social and economic independence? The social identity and status of these women may help to counteract some of the modern images of African women as victims of patriarchy under male power. The implications of the findings for African biblical hermeneutics of which Adamo is one of the foremost proponents cannot be over-emphasised.

Masculine Power? A Gendered Look at the Frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan

The frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan is justly renowned as a powerful visual advertisement for his political philosophy. Consequently, its rich imagery has been the subject of extensive scholarly commentary. Surprisingly, then, its gendered dimensions have received relatively limited attention. This essay explores this neglected facet of the frontispiece. I argue that the image initially appears to present a hypermasculine sovereign. However, upon closer inspection, and considered alongside Hobbes's economic theory, it yields to a reading of the sovereign as an ambiguously gendered figure. Reading the frontispiece through the prism of gender and the economy reveals not a static image of unwavering male power but rather one of an equivocally-sexed creature teeming with life, contradictions, and complexities worthy of continued examination.

Concept of Fallenness and Patriarchy in Anuradha Sharma Pujari’s Novel “Kanchan”

Patriarchy places women in a marginalised position. Women always bare same feeling and same status of their lives in patriarchal oppression and exploitation. Men often speak about virtues and vices of women and on the basis of that categorise them as chaste or unchaste. Women in patriarchal society should be pure to get societal honour. The society decides what a woman should do, how a woman should behave and these views are the cultural determinant of a society or a community. If a woman challenges these lessons of morality, she will get the identity of fallen woman in a patriarchal society. The novelist Sharma Pujari through the portrayal of Kanchan as a fallen woman does not want to condemn her fundamental disorder but attempts to expose the exploitation and oppression that exist in sexual practices and thereby wants to challenge it. A patriarchal society mirrors some cultural views and attitudes of sexuality. On the basis of these norms a woman is relegated to the rank of fallen woman. The man being the superior section of the society proves his male power in the emotional, physical and material sphere of a woman’s life. This power of patriarchal authority determines the fallenness of a woman and thereby deprives her from availing the pleasures and securities which are only permissible for a wife. The culturally constructed feminine myth looks at her as an exception. People’s psyche is moulded by this cultural affinities constructed by patriarchal system. The novel Kanchan describes the discrimination on gender relation and sexual responses between two genders that exists in a patriarchy. Anuradha Sharma Pujari narrates the complexities in the life of the woman character who tries to come out of her destitute situation by using her body. Adopting a feminist perspective this research article attempts to discuss the construction of the idea “fallen women” by patriarchy and the experiences and struggles of the marginalised protagonist Kanchan in the novel Kanchan.

Couples’ Relative Resources, Male Power, and Relationship Conflict from a Comparative Perspective

Using two waves of the Generations and Gender Survey for eight European countries, we test under what conditions couples experience high levels of disagreement over time or separate. The results partly support the idea of relative resources, suggesting that a decrease in the status of men in couples (job loss) is significantly associated with high levels of conflict. The transition to high conflict is more frequent when there is a discrepancy between policy and behavior. Social policies designed to meet the needs of working parents in dual-earner couples together with the diffusion of gender egalitarian values can lead to a reduction in unhealthy levels of couple conflict.

Investigating Rape Culture in News Coverage of the Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford Cases

This content analysis ( N = 1,527) examined the presence of rape culture acceptance (dismissal of event, victim blaming, discrediting survivor, and threats to survivor) and anti-rape culture (support for survivor, and mention of: systemic problem, rape culture, and male power dominance) in news coverage of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against a U.S. Supreme Court nominee. Results show higher rape acceptance in Blasey Ford news coverage and no difference between the cases and anti-rape culture. Online news media focused on personal impact to Blasey Ford, while traditional news media focused on impact to Thomas Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas.

Male and Female Conceptualizations of Sexual Harassment in Tanzania: The Role of Consent, Male Power, and Social Norms

Sexual harassment is pervasive worldwide, yet there is a lack of clarity on its conceptualization in many settings, especially in low-income countries. Context-specific conceptualization of sexual harassment is vital to develop effective measurement tools, estimate its magnitude, and the design of interventions to address it. We explored how different population groups in Mwanza, Tanzania, understood, conceptualized, and experienced sexual harassment. This study employed a qualitative research design involving 74 in-depth interviews and 13 focus group discussions with participants from educational, workplace, and public settings in Mwanza, Tanzania. Participants were adolescent girls and boys, adult women and men. We explored individual-level perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment, and community norms and expectations around sexual harassment. We analyzed the data using a thematic approach. Participants’ perceptions of sexual harassment emphasized the critical role of consent, the expression of male power, and social norms with regard to sexual harassment. Sexual harassment was understood to be a result of men being in positions of power and in charge of material resources, school grades, or employment opportunities. These in turn enabled them to take advantage of girls and women. Social norms around male and female interactions, courtship and seduction, expressions of sexual interest were crucial in delineating what was and what was not considered sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is a fluid concept, and its definition is highly dependent on contextual factors. Consent underpins the conceptualization of sexual harassment and is a fundamental feature in the definition and measurement of sexual harassment in Tanzania. Consent is largely determined by sexual norms around male and female interactions and gendered power. There is a need for consensus in schools, workplaces, and communities about what constitutes sexual harassment in order to measure and address it appropriately.

Female agency in the films of Jean Renoir

Although Jean Renoir’s oeuvre has been extensively debated since the emergence of the politique des auteurs in the pages of Cahiers du cinéma, his representation of gender relations has sustained less discussion than his signature formal style. This article posits that Renoir’s films provide a valuable means of identifying how gender, specifically female identity, affects temporal trajectories in cinema. First, it illustrates Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of crystallisation and situates it in relation to current scholarship on gender representation in the director’s work. Second, it conducts a close analysis of the relationship between female identity and crystallisation through a close analysis of the central female characters of La Règle du jeu (1939) and The Golden Coach (1952). This article ultimately argues that whether these characters belong to an upper-or lower-class stratum, they are subordinated to male power, which plays a determining role in the range of potential futures available to them.

Supremasi Perempuan Dalam Novel Renjana Dyana Karya Adimodel : Kajian Feminisme Radikal

This study aims to describe the form of supremacy shown by female characters and the factors that cause female characters to become radical in the novels being analyzed. This research is descriptive qualitative in nature. The data of this research are in the form of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that reveal the contents of the story in the novel. The data source of this research is the novel Renjana Dyana by Adimodel published by Elex Media Komputindo in 2015. The approach used is the study of radical feminism. The results of this study indicate that first, the form of supremacy shown by the female character in the novel Renjana Dyana is the effort of the Dyana character to make a change in society to end and destroy all male power which is represented in the form of freedom of attitude, action and thought as well as character courage. Dyana takes a fight against men from the aspect of sexuality. Second, apart from women's supremacy, there are factors that cause female characters in Adimodel's Renjana Dyana to become radical, triggered by three factors, namely patriarchy, religion, and economic conditions.

‘We Are Equal but Different’: Challenging Compulsory Heterosexuality by Intersexual Female Athletes in the World of Sport

By using the method of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), this article examines how sport is a conservative institution so far as sexuality and gender identity of female athletes are concerned. The article enquires to know what it means for a sportswoman to be physically strong and active like a man. It explores how the process of binary sex segregation in competitive sports affects the non-heterosexual female athletes and how their sexuality and physicality are considered as a foil in the patriarchal domain of sports. It highlights how the ‘gender verification test’ as a discriminatory tool is used by the sports regulatory bodies to prove female athletes’ sexuality, especially heterosexuality and to maintain the system of patriarchal hegemony in the world of sport. The article looks into how the hegemonic masculinity within sport works to uphold male power, while subjugating the female athletes. It unveils the incidents, how the non-heterosexual female athletes fall victims of homophobia and go through mental stress to confirm to the societal norms of compulsory heterosexuality. More specifically, through in-depth analysis of two contemporary cases of intersexual hyper-androgenic female athletes, this article examines the status and challenges being faced by the non-heterosexual female athletes in sport and focuses upon how their sexuality are addressed in the field of competitive sports. The article also focuses on the agony as well as resilience of intersexual female athletes to break the gender stereotype in sport in postmodern era unlike before.