Women Past and Present: Biographic and Multidisciplinary Studies

ISBN-13: 9781443856799 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 298 str.

Maria Zina De Abreu; Steve Fleetwood

Opis

In Western societies, many traditional feminist claims have already been fulfilled both in law and in official discourse. Indeed, legislative steps have already been taken towards securing civil and political rights and equal opportunities for women. This, of course, is not the case in many other regions of the world, as some of the chapters in this book clearly testify. Yet, notwithstanding the gains achieved in Western societies, residual forms of resistance and prejudice still persist in discourses, categories and discriminative practices in this so-called post-feminist era. Furthermore, new manifestations of asymmetries in gender relations and new ways of thinking and experiencing subjectivity are currently emerging, as a result of growing globalisation, economic crisis, migration patterns, female sex and labour trafficking, trans-nationalism, and new technologies, not to mention the beauty and body-sculpting industries.The chapters in this collection represent a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary, cross-cultural and international engagement with biography, and feminist and gender issues, and reveal important insights and challenge some traditional views, interpretations and understandings. The focus of attention of this collection is twofold. It outlines the struggle of women to overthrow the various forces that have, in various spatio-temporal relations, worked against them. It also reveals the significant contribution made by specific women to the establishment of more democratic and gender-balanced societies that grant women a more egalitarian political, economic and social existence. To this end, central questions and issues surrounding gender identity and gender politics are discussed, which serve to raise awareness about gender, power, ideologies, institutions, everyday practices, culture and discourse.