Global Feminisms Project

Last updated

The Global Feminisms Project, originated in 2002 and based at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at the University of Michigan, [1] is an oral history project led by a team of researchers at the University of Michigan that collects interviews of feminist activists representing seven countries including China, India, Poland, the United States, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Russia. [1] The focus of the project is to record and archive the stories of females who are activists and scholars within the socio-historical context of their own countries, formed with curricular and research goals at its core. [1] The sources provided lend themselves to comparative and interdisciplinary work, addressing issues that reach across disciplines and provide information regarding activism, historical context, identity formation, and social movements. [1] The interviews are designed to explore the ways in which different forms of activism intersect at various, distinct time points within the history of the represented countries.

Contents

The project began with the integration of women's studies, an international perspective, and a focus on the activism within nations. [2] The project emphasizes the relationship between women's activism and feminist scholarship and aims to represent transformations in feminism within each nation represented alongside the following parameters: conceptual, organizational, and social. [2] [3]

Methodology

The interviewees were selected by each country site's team according to criteria they developed, which often emphasized including individuals who differ by generation, geography, and type of activism, among other things. [2] In the interviews, the women were prompted to discuss their families and upbringing, educational and professional experiences, and activism and involvement in social movements; thus, the University of Michigan program leaders did not control the narrative created of feminism in each country. [4] [2] The interviews took place in the interviewees' home country using their native language, later translated into English. [2]

Some notable interviewees include Ai Xiaoming, Flavia Agnes, Neera Desai, Dora María Téllez, Sofia Montenegro, Grace Lee Boggs, and Holly Hughes. [5]

For a full list of interviewees from the Global Feminisms Project, see list below.

Significance

The GFP created a collection of oral histories detailing the origins of feminist activists in several countries. [6] The interviews have served as narrative examples of the feminist adage, "the political is personal." They also expand the understanding of the intersections of gender, nationality, race, and women's studies, political climates, and personal experiences. [6]

The project has produced numerous resources that are publicly available including bibliographies, teaching modules, and the archive of video interviews. [7] Additionally, the transcripts of all USA, Poland, Nicaragua, China, and India interviews in English have been entered into NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software, for individuals interested in using the interviews for research purposes. [8]

List of Interviewees

Source: [5]

Funding

The GFP is partially funded by the following grants and research initiatives:

Related Research Articles

Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.

This is an index of articles related to the issue of feminism, women's liberation, the women's movement, and women's rights.

First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is often used synonymously with the kind of feminism espoused by the liberal women's rights movement with roots in the first wave, with organizations such as the International Alliance of Women and its affiliates. This feminist movement still focuses on equality from a mainly legal perspective.

<i>Signs</i> (journal) Feminist academic journal

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society is a peer-reviewed feminist academic journal. It was established in 1975 by Jean W. Sacks, Head of the Journals Division, with Catharine R. Stimpson as its first editor in Chief, and is published quarterly by the University of Chicago Press. Signs publishes essays examining the lives of women, men, and non-binary people around the globe from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as theoretical and critical articles addressing processes of gendering, sexualization, and racialization.

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.

In one scholarly conception, the history of feminism in Poland can be divided into seven periods, beginning with 19th-century first-wave feminism. The first four early periods coincided with the foreign partitions of Poland, which resulted in an eclipse of a sovereign Poland for 123 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African feminism</span> Type of feminism

African feminism includes theories and movements which specifically address the experiences and needs of continental African women. From a western perspective, these theories and movements fall under the umbrella label of Feminism, but it is important to note that many branches of African "feminism" actually resist this categorization. African women have been engaged in gender struggle since long before the existence of the western-inspired label "African feminism," and this history is often neglected. Despite this caveat, this page will use the term feminism with regard to African theories and movements in order to fit into a relevant network of existing Wikipedia pages on global feminism. Because Africa is not a monolith, no single feminist theory or movement reflects the entire range of experiences African women have. African feminist theories are sometimes aligned, in dialogue, or in conflict with Black Feminism or African womanism. This page covers general principles of African feminism, several distinct theories, and a few examples of feminist movements and theories in various African countries.

Feminism in China refers to the collection of historical movements and ideologies in time aimed at redefining the role and status. women in China. Feminism in China began in the 20th century in tandem with the Chinese Revolution. Feminism in modern China is closely linked with socialism and class issues. Some commentators believe that this close association is damaging to Chinese feminism and argue that the interests of the party are placed before those of women.

A women-only space is an area where only women are allowed, thus providing a place where they do not have to interact with men. Historically and globally, many cultures had, and many still have, some form of female seclusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vina Mazumdar</span> Indian academic and feminist (1927–2013)

Dr. Vina Mazumdar was an Indian academic, left-wing activist and feminist. A pioneer in women's studies in India, she was a leading figure of the Indian women's movement. She was amongst the first women academics to combine activism with scholarly research in women's studies. She was secretary of the first Committee on the Status of Women in India that brought out the first report on the condition of women in the country, Towards Equality (1974). She was the founding Director of the Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), an autonomous organisation established in 1980, under the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). She was a National Research Professor at the Centre for Women's Development Studies, Delhi.

Feminism in Thailand is perpetuated by many of the same traditional feminist theory foundations, though Thai feminism is facilitated through a medium of social movement activist groups within Thailand's illiberal democracy. The Thai State claims to function as a civil society with an intersectionality between gender inequality and activism in its political spheres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Gender Institute</span>

The African Gender Institute (AGI) is a feminist research and teaching group that studies issues related to gender in Africa. It has become a department at the University of Cape Town (UCT), administered within the School of African and Gender Studies, Social Anthropology and Linguistics. The AGI has its own staff and has a unique degree of independence from UCT.

Flavia Agnes is an Indian women's rights lawyer with expertise in marital, divorce, and property law. She has published articles in the journals Subaltern Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, and Manushi. She writes on themes of minorities and law, gender and law, law in the context of women's movements, and on issues of domestic violence, feminist jurisprudence, and minority rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminism in Malaysia</span> Social movement in Malaysia

The feminist movement in Malaysia is a multicultural coalition of women's organisations committed to the end of gender-based discrimination, harassment and violence against women. Having first emerged as women's shelters in the mid 1980s, feminist women's organisations in Malaysia later developed alliances with other social justice movements. Today, the feminist movement in Malaysia is one of the most active actors in the country's civil society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminism in Latin America</span> Social movement for womens rights

Latin American feminism 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. People who practice feminism by advocating or supporting the rights and equality of women are feminists.

Fourth-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began around the early 2010s and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of internet tools, and intersectionality. The fourth wave seeks greater gender equality by focusing on gendered norms and the marginalization of women in society.

Richa Nagar is a scholar, creative writer, educator, and theatre-worker who is Professor of the College in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. Nagar's creative and scholarly work makes multi-lingual and multi-genre contributions to transnational feminism, social geography, critical development studies, and critical ethnography. Her research has encompassed a range of topics including: politics of space, identity and community among communities of South Asian origin in Tanzania; questions of empowerment in relation to grass-roots struggles in the global South, principally with the Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS) in Sitapur District, India; the politics of language and social fracturing in the context of development and neo-liberal globalization; and creative praxis that uses collaboration, co-authorship, and translation to blur the borders between academic, activist, and artistic labor. She has held residential fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford in 2005–2006, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study (JNIAS) at New Delhi in 2011–2012, and at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in 2013. She was named Honorary Professor at the Unit for Humanities at the Rhodes University (UHURU) at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2017, and her work has been translated into several languages including Turkish, Marathi, Italian, German and Mandarin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Embedded feminism</span> Concept in feminism

Embedded feminism is the attempt of state authorities to legitimize an intervention in a conflict by co-opting feminist discourses and instrumentalizing feminist activists and groups for their own agenda. This term was introduced in the analysis of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, but can also be applied to several historical examples where women's rights were used as justification and legitimization of Western interventionism.

Elizabeth Viana is an Afro-Brazilian sociologist and activist who was an active participant in the democratization process of Brazil. She was one of five students with feminist activist Lélia Gonzalez who founded the Group Lima Barreto, and was involved in the Nzinga Collective of Women and the Unified Black Movement. Her work prominently focuses on racial identity, academic and community activism, and reform of domestic and family roles. She currently lives in Vila Isabel, a middle-class neighborhood in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ana Falú</span> Argentine architect and social activist

Ana María Falú is an Argentine architect and a social activist for human rights and for women's rights. She has been Regional Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women for the Andean Region (2002–2004) and for Brazil and the Southern Cone Countries (2004–2009). She is a researcher and Professor at the National University of Córdoba (UNC), where she is the Director of the Housing and Habitat Research Institute (INVIHAB). In the field of feminist action, she promoted numerous institutional initiatives and contributed to the establishment of women's rights to the city, to housing, and to the habitat. She is co-founder of the Women and Habitat Network of Latin America, of the Centro de Intercambio y Servicios para el Cono Sur Argentina (CISCSA), of UNC's Interdisciplinary Program of Women's and Gender Studies (PIEMG), and of Articulación Feminista Marcosur, among other areas of action in favor of women's rights. In 2013 she won the Feminist Career Award together with other Argentine women.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "About the Global Feminisms Project | Global Feminisms at the University of Michigan". globalfeminisms.umich.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Lal, Jayati; McGuire, Kristin; Stewart, Abigail J.; Zaborowska, Magdalena; Pas, Justine M. (2010). "Recasting Global Feminisms: Toward a Comparative Historical Approach to Women's Activism and Feminist Scholarship". Feminist Studies. 36 (1): 13–39. JSTOR   40607998.
  3. ↑ Zheng, WANG; ZHANG, Ying (2010). "Global Concepts, Local Practices: Chinese Feminism since the Fourth UN Conference on Women". Feminist Studies. 36 (1): 40–70. JSTOR   40607999.
  4. ↑ Dutt, Anjali; Grabe, Shelly (2014). "Lifetime activism, marginality, and psychology: Narratives of lifelong feminist activists committed to social change". Qualitative Psychology. 1 (2): 107–122. doi:10.1037/qup0000010.
  5. 1 2 "List of Interviewees (A-Z) | Global Feminisms at the University of Michigan". globalfeminisms.umich.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  6. 1 2 McGuire, Kristin; Stewart, Abigail J.; Curtin, Nicola (2010). "Becoming Feminist Activists: Comparing Narratives". Feminist Studies. 36 (1): 99–125. JSTOR   40608001.
  7. 1 2 "Global Feminism Archive". Third Century Initiative | University of Michigan. 2014-04-28. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
  8. ↑ "How To Use the Interviews | Global Feminisms at the University of Michigan". glblfem.sites.uofmhosting.net. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  9. ↑ "Research at IRWG | The Institute for Research on Women and Gender". irwg.umich.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.