Gender History

What implications does the Srin-mo, a pre-Buddhist deity who traverses across almost all of the periods of time in Tibetan religious life, have on the social status of women? Embodying the places and spaces of Tibet, a malevolent demoness called the Srin-mo has been essential in laying the formation of Tibetan Buddhism. The concept of the Srin-mo can be traced back to the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet: Bön. The story of the Srin-mo is not a creation myth in the sense of a worldly inception,  but the story of the demoness does represent the creation of a harmonious society, spurring from the preceding time of primordial chaos found amongst the Bön religion. Looking at the origins of the demoness’ story is necessary in order to understand how and why the Srin-mo holds efficacious power over the land and people of Tibet. Here, I will investigate the case of the Srin-mo, which is controversially one of the most important beings in Tibet, but unquestionably, an irrevocable component of understanding what implications geography holds on Tibet.

This article examines the fashion for dressing à la grecque among elite women in late Directorial and Consular France. The discourse on Greek fashion served multiple, competing agendas. Neoclassical fashion presented opportunities for women's self-fashioning and agency as well as for reifying and essentializing femininity. Laying claim to the political and artistic virtues associated with the grandeur of classical antiquity, women who adopted neoclassical dress took on roles as arbiters of taste and aesthetics and as works of art themselves.

Das Buch verbindet zwei Schlüsselkonzepte aktueller politischer und feministischer Theorie - Intersektionalität und Gouvernementalität - mit der historischen Analyse der Problematisierung von Prostitution und ihren Regierungsweisen Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts und analysiert, welche Machtlogiken bei der Interpretation der Prostitution als Problem individueller moralischer Führung einerseits und als gesamtgesellschaftliches, politisches Problem andererseits wirkten.
Die Autorin zeigt empirisch auf, dass verschiedene gesellschaftliche Gruppen jeweils spezifisch moralisch regiert wurden und plädiert für ein politisches und prozessorientiertes Verständnis von Intersektionalität, so dass differenzierte Mechanismen der Machtausübung erfassbar werden.

South Asia is a region with unity in diversity, having at least twenty different dominant languages and over two hundred basic dialects. And yet, most of South Asia continues to remain economically poor and "developing" with gender disparity remaining a real concern at the heart of South Asian unity. The 2019 Global Hunger Index ranks all the major South Asian countries in the "serious" category with Sri Lanka coming in 66th, Nepal 73rd, Bangladesh 88th, Pakistan 94th, and India 102nd out of 117 countries. Women suffer the most, as they have to bear the direct burden of gender inequality and, as a consequence, children experience malnutrition. The 2018 Global Nutrition Report states that on average 49 percent of reproductive-age women in South Asia have anemia, and the prevalence of stunting in the population of children under-five is 32.7 percent, which is significantly greater than the global average of 21.9 percent. There is no data available for those who identify as nonbinary, and there is a long way to go before the data gap can be filled despite the official recognition of "third" gender people in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Ironically, in spite of the official recognition of a nonheteronormative gender identity, homosexuality has yet to be decriminalized in most of South Asia with the exception of Nepal and India, having decriminalized homosexuality in 2007 and 2018, respectively. To read more: https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/genderedlives/chapter/chapter-3-introducing-the-region/

This was a research paper for a course entitled Feminist and Multicultural Theologies. I unpack what gender complementarianism is, examine its history, and compare it to how Scripture and earlier Christian Tradition understood gender. This allows me to establish that gender complementarianism is a recent innovation in secular and Christian thinking about gender, and that it can be described as a "trajectory" from Scripture and Tradition on gender, influenced by social, ideological, and intellectual developments in secular societies. I then pursue a critique of gender complementarianism, arguing that it is an "unsatisfactory trajectory" because it has troubling implications for orthodox theology, is not borne out by empirical experience and observation, and has harmful effects on human beings and societies and on ethical development.

The intro is available on my personal website via the link. The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200–1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define “the human” so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex.

The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers—theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists—who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of “monstrous races” in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical “correction” of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions.

In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female—and human.

This is the catalogue to an exhibition of the same name, which took place at the Worshipful Company of Mercers and Leeds University Art Gallery. It presents fifty outstanding artworks by fifty British Women artists working between 1900 - 1950. There is an introductory essay by curator, Sacha Llewellyn, and fifty commentaries about each picture by fifty different writers. The exhibition marks the centenary of the Representation of the People's Act, and aims to readdress the dominant 'master' narrative of British art history.

Ancient Greek poetess Sappho is widely regarded as the oldest known lesbian and feminist in the Western literary history. However, this common notion represents just one in the millennia-long series of reinventions of her persona, since before the fin de siècle her heterosexuality was viewed as an almost indisputable truth. This paper
argues that, throughout the history, the reception of Sappho’s poetry was inevitably faced with the question of her sexuality, which was addressed in very divergent ways. It first uses the theoretical concepts of “Trojan horse” and “compulsory heterosexuality” as outlined by feminist critics Monique Wittig and Adrienne Rich to demonstrate that (homo)erotic sentimentality of Sappho’s magnificent poems produced a moral complex in Western heteropatriarchal societies, which sought to tame and reclaim that poetry by heterosexualizing it. The paper then turns to a diachronic analysis of various discursive strategies of heterosexualization within the Western literary and philological discourses from antiquity to modernity and contrasts them with the contemporary discourse of homosexualization, thus showing that the reception of Sappho’s poetry can be conceptualized as an ideological battle between traditional epistemological regime of compulsory heterosexuality on the one hand and modern political aspiration for women’s and lesbian emancipation, on the other hand. Finally, the article illustrates how contemporary philological and historical research on Sappho, in an attempt to escape that ideological battle, unconsciously falls victim to this millennia-long misogyny.

First published in 1988, this volume redefined the anthropological study of menstrual customs. Examining cultures as diverse as long-house dwellers in North Borneo, African farmers, Welsh housewives, and postindustrial American workers, it challenged the previously widespread image of a universal "menstrual taboo" as well as the common assumption of universal female subordination that underlay it. Offering feminist perspectives on comparative gender politics and symbolism, the book has interested students and scholars in anthropology, women's studies, religion, and comparative health systems. Originally listed as a “Notable” book in Choice, it later won the first Most Enduring Edited Collection Prize, awarded by the Council for the Anthropology of Reproduction (a unit of the American Anthropological Association.). The book continues to be taught regularly around the world.

Given the prominence of Muslim veils—in particular the hijab and full-face veil—in public discourse concerning the place of Muslims in Western society, we examined their impact on non-Muslims’ responses at both explicit and implicit levels. Results revealed that responses were more negative toward any veil compared with no veil, and more negative toward the full-face veil relative to the hijab: for emotions felt toward veiled women (Study 1), for non-affective attitudinal responses (Study 2), and for implicit negative attitudes revealed through response latency measures (Studies 3a and 3b). Finally, we manipulated the perceived reasons for wearing a veil, finding that exposure to positive reasons for wearing a veil led to better predicted and imagined contact (Study 4). Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

This thesis will examine how British male cross-dressing performance remained commercially and critically popular from 1918-1970, despite increased cultural anxieties about the links between gender variance and transgressive acts, behaviours, and categories of identity. Through an analysis of popular male cross-dressing in this period, I will explain how artists and their performances navigated the theatrical and cultural terrain to establish and cultivate mainstream success. Far from being an ‘outsider art’, male cross-dressing endured as an essential part of the fabric of British entertainment from the interwar period through the so-called ‘permissive society’ of the 1950s and 1960s. Even as the variety theatre declined and new forms of entertainment such as radio, film, and television emerged, male cross-dressers were pioneers of the entertainment industry, readily adapting to the changing nature of leisure. Equally, male cross-dressing performance was at the centre of many key public discussions in this period, including those regarding the changing nature of normative masculinities, sexual morality, the decriminalisation of certain homosexual acts, the proliferation of live erotic entertainment, and the breakdown of the official theatre censorship system. However, the centrality of male cross-dressing in relation to these key public debates has been scantly acknowledged by historians of interwar and postwar Britain, in spite of the enduring popularity of the art form in the 1910s through the 1960s. The first three chapters of this thesis investigate the significant manifestations of male cross-dressing performance from 1918-1970: touring revues featuring cross-dressing ex-servicemen in the interwar and post-Second World War periods, the pantomime dame in the interwar years through the 1950s, and the emergence of the drag queen in the 1950s and 1960s. The final chapter highlights areas in which male cross-dressing performance was deemed controversial through an investigation of the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship system. This thesis will argue that contemporary views of male cross-dressing were complex. I will seek to unpack the various regimes of knowledge as they related to the meanings, or absence of meaning, perceivably associated with male cross-dressing. In doing so, my study will reveal that the practice held different and often contradictory meanings for performers and audiences alike. For instance, some newspaper reviews of theatrical productions featuring cross-dressing troupe Les Rouges et Noirs, which this thesis will explore in great detail, made vague allusions to the authors finding gender variance both troubling and alluring. Statements to this effect ranged from the cautiously complimentary: ‘How they have managed to eliminate all trace of that subtle unpleasantness so often associated with this type of thing I know not,’ to the unabashedly positive: ‘Reg Stone [of Les Rouges] in particular… achieves a wonderful sexual transition, complete in all its details down to the white powdered arms and polished manicured fingernails, the dainty gestures and positively pretty little affectations of femininity.’ Male cross-dressing performed before an audience could at once be a source of pleasure and anxiety in a time when British mass entertainment reached a greater and more diverse range of spectators than ever before. It is my hope that this thesis will reorientate interest in interwar and postwar male cross-dressing performance and will inspire a more critical historical approach to the study of gender variance in the twentieth century.

ABSTRACT. In the years following the end of the cold
war in 1989, Western feminist scholars and activists
expressed disappointment in the failure of the newly
democratic Eastern and Central European countries to
sustain mainstream women’s rights movements and
achieve a marked increase in women’s participation
within the new political parties and political life in
general. The authors, historians of Hungarian women’s
movements with a broad East-West perspective, offer a
novel explanation for this phenomenon. Following an
outline of the main stages of Hungarian women’s
movements and women’s political participation, they
focus on two instances in twentieth-century Hungarian
history that resulted in a rapid transition from antidemocratic regimes to liberal, parliamentary systems:
the 1918 bourgeois democratic revolution and the
1990 re-introduction of free parliamentary elections.

DOI 10.1080/08038740410004623

Insofar as gender is still so often equated with women alone, the move from Women in Development to Gender in Development has changed very little. Men as a human category have always been present, involved, consulted, obeyed and disobeyed in development work. Yet men as a gendered category in a feminist sense-involving unequal power relations between men and women and between men-have rarely been drawn into development programmes in any substantial way. This paper addresses conceptual and ...

This book is OPEN ACCESS and available for download on JSTOR and other online repositories (see attached link to Cornell Press page and JSTOR DOI).

Institutionalizing Gender analyzes the relationship between class, gender, and psychiatry in France from 1789 to 1900, an era noteworthy for the creation of the psychiatric profession, the development of a national asylum system, and the spread of bourgeois gender values.

Nas últimas quatro décadas de regime democrático a representatividade política das mulheres tem sofrido uma evolução positiva. A partir de uma perspetiva histórica, esta comunicação oferece uma resenha da legislação e uma avaliação sociológica da classe política portuguesa com o objetivo de abordar a questão do género. Centrando-se no poder local entre 1974 e 2017, analisa a participação ativa das mulheres nas primeiras comissões administrativas nomeadas em 1974 e que funcionaram até às primeiras eleições autárquicas que se realizaram a 12 de dezembro de 1976, a que se seguiram eleições regulares primeiro com intervalos de três anos e, a partir de 1989, de quatro. Em todos os níveis de governo avaliados ainda se verifica uma sub-representação das mulheres nos cargos de representação política em Portugal.
Em 2006 foi aprovada a Lei da Paridade, que obrigou a um mínimo de 33% para cada género nas listas partidárias de candidatos, a qual foi pela primeira vez aplicada nas eleições legislativas e autárquicas de 2009. Não há dúvida que esta lei produziu resultados imediatos, pelo menos na eleição de mulheres deputadas. Contudo, a nível local, apesar de a lei da paridade ser cumprida com a colocação de mulheres nas listas, estas raramente estão em posições elegíveis para presidente.
Apresentam-se alguns dados comparativos que podem ajudar à compreensão da questão do género a nível local, especialmente nas questões da transparência, e analisam-se os programas eleitorais e mensagens políticas das representantes eleitas.

Im Zentrum des Beitrages steht die Analyse der Kategorie des „Vertrauens der Partei“ in der Etablierung der sowjetischen Subjektivitäten im frühen Sowjetrussland. Basierend auf den verschiedenen Typen von Bittschriften der BürgerInnen an die Partei- und Staatsautoritäten werden die Techniken des autobiographischen Schreibens in die Prozesse der bolschewistischen Persönlichkeits-, Staats- und Gesellschaftsbildung eingebettet. Der Autor zeigt, wie das „Vertrauen der Partei“ moralisiert und materialisiert, personifiziert und beglaubigt, visualisiert und geschlechtsspezifisch definiert wurde. Insbesondere während des Großen Terrors wurde es zum alltäglichen Kampfbegriff, um über das Leben und den Tod einer Person zu entscheiden.

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated ‘double shift’ that result in widespread calls to either ‘lean in’ or ‘opt out’? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves?


In Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities, Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as ‘individuals’ and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter.


Bueskens’ theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women’s duality drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and ‘rewriting the sexual contract’. Bridging this gap, Bueskens’ interviews ten ‘revolving mothers’ to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disturbs the gendered dynamics of household work.


A provocative and original work, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Women and Gender Studies, Sociology of Motherhood and Social and Political Theory.


Endorsements:


Petra Bueskens has been in the forefront of the new, and very welcome field of motherhood studies.  In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contact [she analyses] the psychic, social, cultural and political challenges posed by the dual identities of mother and citizen, elegantly and capaciously ranges across 400 years of theory, up to the present, that address them, as well as providing psychologically-attuned interview documentation of how women feel and think, daily and throughout their maternal lives.
Nancy J Chodorow
Author, The Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, and other works Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley


This creative and theoretically rich book re-examines the social contradictions and penalties faced by women who want to be both caring mothers and autonomous public individuals.  Taking us beyond the logic of the "sexual contract," Bueskens introduces us to the "revolving mothers" who offer a glimpse of the social revolution required to undo the gendered separation of spheres.  A fascinating and compelling study.
Dr. Sharon Hays, author of the The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood



In this lucid, timely and important new book, Petra Bueskens takes up the formidable task of investigating the 'new sexual contract' in late modernity that leaves women strung out between the promise of autonomy in the public sphere, and the demands of motherhood that isolate and intensify mothering work in the home, both freeing and constraining women at once. Bueskens brings into view this impossible contradictory duality by producing both a new social theory of dualism, and the empirical evidence to show that it is possible to force changes in the sexual contract at the level of individual family organization. Through tracking a small group of women who both choose to mother and also spend protracted periods of time away from the family, she shows how these women produce radical shifts in the gendered dynamics of the household. Her bold and vital claim is that we can rewrite the sexual contract only if we understand the historical and contemporary double-bind that produces women's liberty as it undermines it, making motherhood still the unfinished business of feminism.
Dr. Lisa Baraitser, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birckbeck University, author of Maternal Encounters


Modern Mothers' Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract cogently and compellingly elucidates a central debate in motherhood studies and a persistent dilemma in most mothers' lives; namely the contradiction between women's maternal and individualized selves.  Through her lucid theoretical ruminations on the 'new sexual contract' in late modernity and by way of an innovative empirical study on 'revolving mothers', Bueskens delivers the needed blueprints to actualize the potential of what she incisively terms 'the individualized mother'.
Dr. Andrea O'Reilly, Professor of Women's Studies, York University, Toronto, Founder and Director of the Motherhood Initiative and author of Matricentric Feminism.



In this engaging and timely book, Petra Bueskens tackles a central challenge of modern life - how to reconcile the contradictory roles of women as citizens, individual workers and mothers. She traces the history through the theoretical views of motherhood, integrating the multiple strands in a sophisticated and fascinating synthesis. She highlights periodic maternal absence as a bridge between individualism and constraint, revealing both the ambiguities and a potential way to progress women's liberation. The book is an absorbing read that makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of contemporary motherhood.
Dr. Lyn Craig, Professor of Sociology/ARC Future Fellow, The University of Melbourne, author of Contemporary Motherhood.

This chapter offers a discussion of the voice and discourses of class in British regional sagas, with particular reference to the four volumes of autobiography by 'Helen Forrester' and the two fictions she published alongside them (1974-85), and their comparison with Liverpool saga fictions by other authors, published in the 1990s. Awareness of class is fundamental to all types of saga fiction, which depict a tension, sometimes a negotiation, between class divisions defined by economic situation, and the need for status. Status is defined as "honour and prestige" by Joyce (Joyce, 1995, pp.19-20) but in this discussion could be better considered as the sense of worth, or shame, which class has often been perceived to bestow or deny.

Ce livre analyse les discours, les modèles et les contre-modèles d’une adolescence féminine qui charrie encore aujourd’hui son lot d’inquiétudes. À travers une analyse socioculturelle de la notion d’adolescence, Laura Di Spurio retrace les mutations et les permanences de la figure de la jeune fille. Au cours du XXe siècle, l’adolescence se mue en classe d’âge pour bientôt devenir un espace culturel, social et biopsychologique. L’adolescence devient un principe explicatif « pour toutes ». Ce nouveau modèle adolescent est dessiné par des adultes emplis de peurs face à cette jeunesse féminine qu’ils jugent plus précoce, plus libre et plus affirmée. Comment accorder cette notion pensée au masculin sans troubler un féminin que l’on voudrait éternel ? Comment appliquer cette notion à toutes les jeunes filles, même à celles dont le quotidien s’éloigne du modèle tracé par les scientifiques ? Que fait l’adolescence aux jeunes filles ? Et enfin, comment celles-ci troublent-elles la notion ?
Ce sont les questions posées par cet ouvrage qui, à partir d’un corpus de sources variées, raconte un demi- siècle d’histoire du côté des jeunes filles.

“Rosa M. Gregori Roig, La impressora Jerònima Galés i Mey (València, segle XVI), Pròleg de Francisco M. Gimeno Blay (Col·lecció Duc de Calàbria), València, Biblioteca Valenciana Nicolau Primitiu, 2012”, Arxiu de textos catalans antics, 30 (2015), pp. 659-661. ISSN 2013-9535

El punk fue uno de los herederos del rock. Y se construyó en torno a la manifestación masculina y masculinizante de la música. Pero se hizo desde la tensión hacia él, con elementos que facilitaron la subversión discursiva. En cuanto a la identidad sexual, Las Vulpes encontraron tanto en su imagen como en su música, formas de transgresión.

Muurling, S. (2020). Women, Violence and the Uses of Justice Before the Criminal Court of Early Modern Bologna. In M. van der Heijden, M. Pluskota & S. Muurling (Eds.), Women's criminality in Europe, 1600-1914 (pp. 49-71). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

An international cross-cultural and multidisciplinary seminar on Women and Death organized and chaired by Evy Johanne Håland at the Centre for Women and Gender Research at the University of Bergen in 2006. The proceedings were later edited and published: Håland, E. J. (ed.): Women, Pain and Death: Rituals and Everyday-Life on the Margins of Europe and Beyond. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2008 (https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/9781847188700). In addition to the introduction, my own contribution outlines my theoretical approach to the theme.

For the last thirty years, research on mobility and migration in Ancient Rome has been particularly dynamic. However, unlike other historical eras, few gendered approaches to these phenomena in the Roman period have been published and those have mostly focused on women’s experiences and identities in contexts of mobility/migration. This paper starts with a brief account of the scientific literature on this topic ; it then sheds light on the various types of evidence available for the study of women’s circulations in the ancient Roman world, and on their benefits and limits from a methodological point of view. Special attention is given to epigraphical evidence, through the case study of the city of Rome (late Republic – High Empire). This paper draws on the inscriptions (mostly epitaphs) mentioning women who moved or more often migrated to the Vrbs.

The graphical representation of a social and cultural asymmetry: gender in matrimonial dispensations, between the Middle Ages and the early modern period /

La représentation graphique d’une asymétrie sociale et culturelle : du genre dans les dispenses matrimoniales, entre Moyen Âge et époque moderne