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.
Feminist sociology is an interdisciplinary exploration of gender and power throughout society. Here, it uses conflict theory and theoretical perspectives to observe gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within social structures at large. Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality.
Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, height, physical appearance, age, and weight. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.
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.
Kurdish women traditionally had more rights than those living in other Islamic social and political systems, although traditional Kurdish culture, as most of traditional societies in the Middle East, is patriarchal, and in Kurdish families and communities, it has been "natural" for men to enjoy predominant power. Kurdish traditions, despite the religious pressure, have allowed women to work outside their home and alongside men, including militarily, and Kurdish histrory saw examples of women becoming military or community leaders. Pro-feminist values began gaining a significant weight among politically active Kurds in the 1980s, and Kurdish women's rights and equality have improved dramatically in the 21st century due to progressive movements within Kurdish society, and Kurdish women have played an almost equal role with men in struggle for democracy and Kurdish national liberation. However, despite the progress, Kurdish and international women's rights organizations still report problems related to gender inequality, forced marriages, honor killings, and in Iraqi Kurdistan, female genital mutilation (FGM).
Himani Bannerji is a Canadian writer, sociologist, scholar, and philosopher from Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
The Kamer Foundation, sometimes referred to as Ka-Mer, is a Turkish women's group that finds shelter for and offers legal aid to women who have been threatened by their relatives.
Feminist psychology is a form of psychology centered on social structures and gender. Feminist psychology critiques historical psychological research as done from a male perspective with the view that males are the norm. Feminist psychology is oriented on the values and principles of feminism.
The status of women in Iraq has been affected by wars, Islamic law, the Constitution of Iraq, cultural traditions, and secularism. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women are war widows, and Women's rights organizations struggle against harassment and intimidation while they work to promote improvements to women's status in the law, in education, the workplace, and many other spheres of Iraqi life. Abusive practices such as honor killings and forced marriages persist.
Sunera Thobani is a Tanzanian-Canadian feminist sociologist, academic, and activist. Her research interests include critical race theory, postcolonial feminism, anti-imperialism, Islamophobia, Indigeneity, and the War on Terror. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. Thobani is also a founding member of Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equality/Equity (R.A.C.E.), the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), and the director for the Centre for Race, Autobiography, Gender, and Age (RAGA).
Sherene Razack is a Distinguished Professor and the Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies in the Department of Gender Studies, University of California at Los Angeles. As a feminist critical race scholar, her research and teaching focus on racial violence. She is best known for her contributions to feminist and critical race studies about discrimination against Muslim and Indigenous women in Canada, systemic racism in the Canadian justice system, and colonial violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide. She is the founder of the virtual research and teaching network Racial Violence Hub (RVHub). Formerly a Distinguished Professor of Critical Race and Gender Studies in the Department of Social Justice, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (1991-2016), she relocated to the United States from Canada in 2016.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty is a Distinguished Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education and Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Mohanty, a postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist, has argued for the inclusion of a transnational approach in exploring women’s experiences across the world. She is author of Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, and co-editor of Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, Feminism and War: Confronting U.S. Imperialism,, The Sage Handbook on Identities, and Feminist Freedom Warriors: Genealogies, Justice, Politics, and Hope.
Debora Diniz Rodrigues, is an anthropologist and law professor at the University of Brasília, and a co-founder and researcher at Anis: Institute for Bioethics. She is also a researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker. Her research projects focus on bioethics, feminism, human rights and health. She was a visiting researcher at the University of Leeds, the University of Michigan, the University of Toronto, among other institutions.
Tithi Bhattacharya is Associate Professor of South Asian history at Purdue University. She is a prominent Marxist feminist and one of the national organizers of the International Women's Strike on March 8, 2017. Bhattacharya is a vocal advocate of Palestinian rights and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. In her book, Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), Cheryl Glenn describes rhetorical feminism as, "a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.
Özlem Alev Demirel-Böhlke is a Turkish-born German politician of Kurdish descent who is currently a serving representative of the party The Left as a Member of the European Parliament.
Nükhet Sirman is a Turkish social anthropologist. She earned a doctorate degree from Britain's University College London in 1988, and since 1989, she is a professor of anthropology at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. She has done academic analysis of the feminist movement in Turkey and introduced the concept of "familial citizenship" in the academic realm.
Women were active in a number of roles during the Gulf War.
Asian American feminism encompass a series of evolving sociopolitical movements, theory, and praxis that address the intersections of identities, struggles, and unique experiences of Asian American women and queer people in the broader context of feminism.
