129 6 Student feminist activism to challenge gender based violence Ruth Lewis and Susan Marine Introduction In the midst of growing attention to and concern about gender based violence (GBV) in universities, a key piece in the jigsaw of responses to GBV are student activists who resist GBV and supporting cultures. This activism has attracted criticism from some quarters which caricatures students as delicate, precious and easily offended, resorting to silencing those they deem to cause offence, thereby threatening freedom of speech. In this environment
28,000 African Americans had gone through the Citizenship Schools, a powerful accomplishment highlighting ‘the nature of Clark’s work in the movement: using education to empower grassroots people, particularly African American women, so they might become leading citizens in their communities’ (Hall et al, 2010 , p 32). Re-orientating commonly held understandings of histories of inequality, oppression, exploitation, and white supremacy in the US Southeast reveals deep and long legacies of Black feminist activism and praxis. Feminist geographers have prioritized
How can we reimagine the relationship between academia and activism to provide new opportunities for social change?
Based on an ethnography with an anti-violence feminist collective, this vibrant and vital book develops an interdisciplinary approach to activism and activist research, helping us reimagine the role of scholarship in the fight against social inequality.
With its reflections on novel tools that can be utilized in the fight for social justice, this book will be a valuable resource for academics in critical management studies, sociology, gender studies, and social work as well as practitioners and policymakers across the social services sector.
This is a nuanced and compelling analysis of grassroots feminist activism in Russia in the politically turbulent 2010s.
Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the author illustrates how a new generation of activists chose feminism as their main political beacon, and how they negotiated the challenges of authoritarian and conservative trends.
As we witness a backlash against feminism on a global scale with the rise of neo-conservative governments, this highly relevant book decentres Western theory and concepts on feminism and social movements, offering significant insights into how resistance can mobilise and invent creative tactics to cope with an increasingly repressed space for independent political action.
This ground-breaking collection interrogates protest camps as sites of gendered politics and feminist activism.
Drawing on case studies that range from Cold War women-only peace camps to more recent mixed-gender examples from around the world, diverse contributors reflect on the recurrence of gendered, racialised and heteronormative structures in protest camps, and their potency and politics as feminist spaces.
While developing an intersectional analysis of the possibilities and limitations of protest camps, this book also tells new and inspiring stories of feminist organising and agency. It will appeal to feminist theorists and activists, as well as to social movement scholars.
EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
What is feminist peace? How can we advocate for peace from patriarchy? What do women, globally, advocate for when they use the term 'peace'? This edited collection brings together conversations across borders and boundaries to explore plural, intersectional and interdisciplinary concepts of feminist peace.
The book includes contributions from a geographically diverse range of scholars, judges, practitioners and activists, and the chapters cut across themes of movement building and resistance and explore the limits of institutionalised peacebuilding. The chapters deal with a range of issues, such as environmental degradation, militarization, online violence and arms spending.
Offering a resource to advance theoretical development and to advocate for policy change, this book transcends traditional approaches to the study of peace and security and embraces diverse voices and perspectives which are absent in both academic and policy spaces.
The challenge of violence against women should be recognised as an issue for the state, citizenship and the whole community. This book examines how responses by the state sanction violence against women and shape a woman’s citizenship long after she has escaped from a violent partner.
Drawing from a long-term study of women’s lives in Australia, including before and after a relationship with a violent partner, it investigates the effects of intimate partner violence on aspects of everyday life including housing, employment, mental health and social participation.
The book contributes to theoretical explanations of violence against women by reframing it through the lens of sexual politics. Finally, it offers critical insights for the development of social policy and practice.
Until recently, higher education in the UK has largely failed to recognise gender-based violence (GBV) on campus, but following the UK government task force set up in 2015, universities are becoming more aware of the issue. And recent cases in the media about the sexualised abuse of power in institutions such as universities, Parliament and Hollywood highlight the prevalence and damaging impact of GBV.
In this book, academics and practitioners provide the first in-depth overview of research and practice in GBV in universities. They set out the international context of ideologies, politics and institutional structures that underlie responses to GBV in elsewhere in Europe, in the US, and in Australia, and consider the implications of implementing related policy and practice.
Presenting examples of innovative British approaches to engagement with the issue, the book also considers UK, EU and UN legislation to give an international perspective, making it of direct use to discussions of ‘what works’ in preventing GBV.
In this important book, experts assess what the COVID-19 pandemic means for gender inequalities in the global south, examining how threats to equitable development will impact the most marginalised and at-risk women and girls in particular.
The book draws on research across sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America to examine Covid-19-related issues around gender-based violence, work and care, education, and health care, and asks whether global responses are enough to mitigate the negative outcomes of deepening gender inequality. It is a guide to stimulate the important debate about how to promote women’s rights during the management and recovery phases of the pandemic.
How does gendered power work? How does it circulate? How does it become embedded? And most importantly, how can we challenge it?
Heather Savigny highlights five key traits of cultural sexism – violence, silencing, disciplining, meritocracy and masculinity – prevalent across the media, entertainment and cultural industries that keep sexist values firmly within popular consciousness.
She traces the development of key feminist thinkers before demonstrating how the normalization of misogyny in popular media, culture, news and politics perpetuates patriarchal values within our everyday social and cultural landscape. She argues that we need to understand why #MeToo was necessary in the first place in order to bring about impactful, lasting and meaningful change.
