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Ewa Charkiewicz (born September 22, 1951) is a Polish economist, socialist feminist, [1] and member of the Green Party. She conducts transdisciplinary research and lectured at universities in the Netherlands, the United States and India. She combines academic work with involvement in social movements. [2]
In the 1980s she was a journalist in the magazine Na Przełaj and one of the founders of the Movement 'I prefer to be'. In the 1990s, she was a member and coordinator of the Gender Advisor Group at the World Bank, where she coordinated the research program on ecology and sustainability in DAWN, a feminist network of researchers and activists from the South. She co-founded the Feminist Institute in Bangalore. She belongs to the Karat Coalition.
In 2005, she founded the Tomek Byra Foundation, Ecology and Art in Poland, initiated the Feminist Think Tank, and co-organized the seminar "Left from Foucault: Transformation and Power" (2006–2009). In 2010, she initiated the creation of the Left Feminist Network Starfish. She writes transformation analysis published on the Foundation's website, Tomek Byry Ecology and Art.
She is the author and editor of books on feminist critique of economics, ecology and relationships between gender and economic development, including Women, Environment and Sustainable Development. Towards Theoretical Synthesis (London 1994), Transitions to Sustainable Consumption and Production. Theories, Concepts, Actions (Maastricht 2000), Globalization and Changes in Consumption and Production Patterns in Central and Eastern Europe (Ljubljana 1998).
Charkiewicz practices feminism as a social criticism aimed at undermining all power relations, not only those related to gender. She criticizes liberal feminism for essentialism and blurring the economic differences between women. [1]
Feminism is a range of social movements, political movements, and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that societies prioritize the male point of view, and that women are treated unjustly within those societies. Efforts to change that include fighting against gender stereotypes and establishing educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women that are equal to those for men.
Feminist economics is the critical study of economics and economies, with a focus on gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis. Feminist economic researchers include academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitioners. Much feminist economic research focuses on topics that have been neglected in the field, such as care work, intimate partner violence, or on economic theories which could be improved through better incorporation of gendered effects and interactions, such as between paid and unpaid sectors of economies. Other feminist scholars have engaged in new forms of data collection and measurement such as the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), and more gender-aware theories such as the capabilities approach. Feminist economics is oriented towards the goal of "enhancing the well-being of children, women, and men in local, national, and transnational communities."
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Marxist feminism is a philosophical variant of feminism that incorporates and extends Marxist theory. Marxist feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of private property. According to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved by dismantling the capitalist systems in which they contend much of women's labor is uncompensated. Marxist feminists extend traditional Marxist analysis by applying it to unpaid domestic labor and sex relations.
Cultural feminism, the view that there is a "female nature" or "female essence", attempts to revalue and redefine attributes ascribed to femaleness. It is also used to describe theories that commend innate differences between women and men. Cultural feminism diverged from radical feminism, when some radical feminists rejected the previous feminist and patriarchal notion that feminine traits are undesirable and returned to an essentialist view of gender differences in which they regard female traits as superior.
Materialist feminism highlights capitalism and patriarchy as central in understanding women's oppression. Under materialist feminism, gender is seen as a social construct, and society forces gender roles, such as bearing children, onto women. Materialist feminism's ideal vision is a society in which women are treated socially and economically the same as men. The theory centers on social change rather than seeking transformation within the capitalist system. Jennifer Wicke defines materialist feminism as "a feminism that insists on examining the material conditions under which social arrangements, including those of gender hierarchy, develop... materialist feminism avoids seeing this gender hierarchy as the effect of a singular... patriarchy and instead gauges the web of social and psychic relations that make up a material, historical moment". She states that "...materialist feminism argues that material conditions of all sorts play a vital role in the social production of gender and assays the different ways in which women collaborate and participate in these productions". Material feminism also considers how women and men of various races and ethnicities are kept in their lower economic status due to an imbalance of power that privileges those who already have privilege, thereby protecting the status quo. Materialist feminists ask whether people have access to free education, if they can pursue careers, have access or opportunity to become wealthy, and if not, what economic or social constraints are preventing them from doing so, and how this can be changed.
Transnational feminism refers to both a contemporary feminist paradigm and the corresponding activist movement. Both the theories and activist practices are concerned with how globalization and capitalism affect people across nations, races, genders, classes, and sexualities. This movement asks to critique the ideologies of traditional white, classist, western models of feminist practices from an intersectional approach and how these connect with labor, theoretical applications, and analytical practice on a geopolitical scale.
Gender mainstreaming is the public policy concept of assessing the different implications for people of different genders of any planned policy action, including legislation and programmes, in all areas and levels. Mainstreaming essentially offers a pluralistic approach that values the diversity among people of different genders.
Feminist political ecology is a feminist perspective on political ecology, drawing on theories from post-structuralism, feminist geography, and cultural ecology. Feminist political ecology examines the place of intersectional social relations in the political ecological landscape, exploring them as a factor in ecological and political relations. Specific areas in which feminist political ecology is focused are development, landscape, resource use, agrarian reconstruction and rural-urban transformation. Feminist political ecologists suggest gender is a crucial variable – in relation to class, race and other relevant dimensions of political ecological life – in constituting access to, control over, and knowledge of natural resources.
Mihaela Miroiu is a Romanian political theorist and feminist philosopher and the most prominent activist for women's rights and a very well known activist for Roma rights, more generally, for minorities rights. She is currently Professor of Political science at the Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest.
In the early 1960s, an interest in women and their connection with the environment was sparked, largely by a book written by Esther Boserup entitled Woman's Role in Economic Development. Starting in the 1980s, policy makers and governments became more mindful of the connection between the environment and gender issues. Changes began to be made regarding natural resource and environmental management with the specific role of women in mind. According to the World Bank in 1991, "Women play an essential role in the management of natural resources, including soil, water, forests and energy...and often have a profound traditional and contemporary knowledge of the natural world around them". Whereas women were previously neglected or ignored, there was increasing attention paid to the impact of women on the natural environment and, in return, the effects the environment has on the health and well-being of women. The gender-environment relations have valuable ramifications in regard to the understanding of nature between men and women, the management and distribution of resources and responsibilities and the day-to-day life and well being of people.
Amrita Basu is an American academic and political scientist. She currently is a professor at Amherst College where she holds affiliations in the departments of Political Science, Sexuality, Women's, & Gender Studies, Asian Languages & Civilizations, and Black Studies.
A variety of movements of feminist ideology have developed over the years. They vary in goals, strategies, and affiliations. They often overlap, and some feminists identify themselves with several branches of feminist thought.
The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), formerly the Association for Women in Development, is an international, feminist, membership organization committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women's human rights established in 1982.
Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism that sees environmentalism, and the relationship between women and the earth, as foundational to its analysis and practice. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminist theory asserts a feminist perspective of Green politics that calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group. Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism. Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism, and poetry.
Counter-hegemonic globalization is a social movement based in a perspective of globalization that challenges the contemporary view of globalization, neoliberal globalization. Counter-hegemonic globalization confronts the implicit idea of neoliberal globalization, that the system of domination as a consequence of the development of transnational networks, transportation and communication is a natural and inevitable course for globalization. It maintains that transnational connections can instead be harnessed as the means to bring about more equitable distribution of wealth, power, and sustainable communities. Counter-hegemonic globalization, unlike neoliberal globalization, uses the assets of globalization to stand against any form of domination by hegemony, operating from a bottom-up process that stresses the empowerment of the local.
Lise Vogel is a feminist sociologist and art historian from the United States. An influential Marxist-feminist theoretician, she is recognised for being one of the main founders of the Social Reproduction Theory. She also participated in the civil rights and the women's liberation movements in organisations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi and Bread & Roses in Boston. In her earlier career as an art historian, she was one of the first to try to develop a feminist perspective on Art History.
Lídia Puigvert is professor of sociology and gender at the University of Barcelona. Feminist author internationally known by her theoretical contribution on dialogic feminism and the overcoming of gender violence. She has published with authors such as Judith Butler and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim in their work Women and Social Transformation. Due to her relevant contributions in the gender area she has been appointed as consultant in this dimension in several occasions for European research projects of the Framework Programme of Research of the European Union like in the current case of the IMPACT-EV, INCLUD-ED and WORKALÓ, she has led as principal investigator several projects and currently she is coordinating Life paths that move away or move closer to human trafficking with the purpose of sexual exploitation. In 2008 she was member of the Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women at the European Women's Lobby Observatory. And as a lecturer, she has been invited to lecture conferences and seminars in different universities around the world, among others, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and Harvard University.
Feminism in Latin America is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and achieving equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for Latin American women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. Those who practice feminism by advocating or supporting the rights and equality of women are called feminists.
Virginia "Gina" Vargas Valente is a Peruvian sociologist and a leader of the women's movement in her country.
