Gender studies: women and girls Books

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Book SynopsisThese unique insights into the political struggles of Cambodian women extend the concept of resistance and create a framework of analysis that will inspire researchers in other fields. In a world where there are few women politicians, Cambodia is still noticeable as a country where strong cultural and societal forces act to subjugate women and limit their political opportunities. However, in their everyday life, Cambodian women do try to improve their situation and increase their political power, not least via manifold strategies of resistance. This book focuses on Cambodian female politicians and the strategies they deploy in their attempts to destabilize the cultural boundaries and hierarchies that restrain them. In particular, the book focuses on how women use discourses and identities as means of resistance, a concept only recently of wide interest among scholars studying power. The value of this book is thus twofold: not only does it give a unique insight into the political struggles of Cambodian women but also offers new insights to studies of power.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Hybrid Liberal Democracy in a Cambodian Context; The Look of Discursive Disciplinary Power; Education and Normalizing as Strategies of Resistance; The Strategy of Establishing New Truths; Women's Identities as Means of Resistance; De-naturalizing as Resistance; Globalization, Women's Political Participation and the Politics of Resistance; Concluding Reflections; References; Index

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Book SynopsisWhy is it that, although Burmese women historically enjoyed relatively high social status and economic influence, for the most part they remained conspicuously absent from positions of authority in formal religious, social and political institutions?This is the starting point of a fascinating study that explores the relationship between gender and power in Burmese history from pre-colonial times to the present day and which aims to identify the sources, nature and limitations of women's power. It thus examines the concept of 'family' in Burmese political culture, how various influences like Buddhism shaped Burmese concepts of gender and power, and how the effects of prolonged armed conflict, economic isolation and political oppression have constrained opportunities for women to attain power in contemporary Burma.

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Book SynopsisThe branding of Singapore International Airlines with the image of a beautiful, petite and servile 'Oriental' woman dressed in figure-hugging sarong-kebaya is one of the world's longest running and most successful advertising campaigns. But this image does not simply advertise a service; it is part of a global and national regime of symbolic constructions of gender that today is seen as outdated and sexist, and bearing little relation to modern Singapore where women have good access to education and increased life choices resulting from engagement in the wage economy. The nation's economic success has been a force for their liberation. One catastrophic consequence of women's changed lives has been the plunge in fertility rates. Singapore has one of the world's lowest despite energetic government campaigns encouraging women to have more babies and men to be more 'masculine'. The failure of these campaigns and rethinking of the Singapore Girl highlight a key premise of this book: there are limits to the power of discursive constructions of gender in the national interest.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Rethinking the Singapore Girl Imagining the Nation Public Spaces of Discourse A Word on Critical Strategies The Limits of Narrative Control 1. Narrating the Nation 17 Masculine Nation Creating Modern Subjects Vulnerable Nation Global Citizens 2. Family and Nation 43 Creating the Capitalist Family The Nation and Family as Discursive Objects The Female Body and the Unsettling of Nation 3. The Politics of Fertility 61 Decreasing Reproduction to Increase Production: the 'Stop at Two' Campaign Quality vs Quantity Have Three or More if You Can Afford It 4. Romancing Singapore 85 Selling Marriage and Parenthood The Romance of Nation - Family and Capital No Sex, Please - We're Singaporean 5. Resisting the Hardsell 113 Pragmatism vs Love The Paradox of Romance Beyond Babies 6. The New Singapore Woman 139 Bad Subjects Taming the New Singapore Woman Peeling Prawns - Recovering the Asian Woman 7. The Crisis of Representation 163 Loss of Narrative Authority Reinscribing Men - The New Singapore Man Feminised Nation References 187 Index 207

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Book SynopsisThis edited volume, including contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field, addresses the challenges, obstacles and opportunities for increased women's political representation in Thailand. Will Thai politics be different with an increase in the number of women politicians? What are the possibilities for Thai women to take proactive initiatives that aim to transform Thai politics into being more gender aware and equal? In seeking to address these and related issues, the analysis brings together a complex interplay of factors, such as traditional Thai views of gender and politics; the national and local political context of the new Thai constitution of 1997; and recent experiences of selected women politicians in the legislative and executive branches of Thai government.Table of ContentsCh 1: Introduction (Kazuki Iwanaga). Ch 2: Overview of the Thai Social-Cultural Perspective on Women in Politics (Juree Vichit-Vadakan). Ch 3: Women as Political Leaders: A Case Study (Khunying Supatra Masdit). Ch 4: Women and Equality in Thai-Style Democracy (Kornvipa Boonsue). Ch 5: Women's Representation in Parlia-ment: Obstacles and Political Content in Comparative Perspective (Kazuki Iwanaga). Ch 6: Patterns of Women's Voting Behaviour (Amporn Tamronglak). Ch 7: Women in the Bureaucracy (Supin Kachacupt). Ch 8: Does Political Decentralization Give Women More Space and Power in Local Politics? (Orathai Kokpol). Ch 9: The Role of NGOs in Promoting the Advancement of Women in Politics (Suteera Vichitranonda and Meytinee Bhongsavej). Ch 10: Women Politicians' Views About Corruption in Thai Politics (Marjorie Suriyamongkol and Amalin Sundaravej). Ch 11: Challenges and Opportunities for Using the Beijing Platform for Action in Thai Politics (Marjorie Suriyamongkol). Ch 12: Concluding Remarks (Kazuki Iwanaga and Marjorie Suriyamongkol).

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Book SynopsisThese unique insights into the political struggles of Cambodian women extend the concept of resistance and create a framework of analysis that will inspire researchers in other fields. In a world where there are few women politicians, Cambodia is still noticeable as a country where strong cultural and societal forces act to subjugate women and limit their political opportunities. However, in their everyday life, Cambodian women do try to improve their situation and increase their political power, not least via manifold strategies of resistance. This book focuses on Cambodian female politicians and the strategies they deploy in their attempts to destabilize the cultural boundaries and hierarchies that restrain them. In particular, the book focuses on how women use discourses and identities as means of resistance, a concept only recently of wide interest among scholars studying power. The value of this book is thus twofold: not only does it give a unique insight into the political struggles of Cambodian women but also offers new insights to studies of power.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Hybrid Liberal Democracy in a Cambodian Context; The Look of Discursive Disciplinary Power; Education and Normalizing as Strategies of Resistance; The Strategy of Establishing New Truths; Women's Identities as Means of Resistance; De-naturalizing as Resistance; Globalization, Women's Political Participation and the Politics of Resistance; Concluding Reflections; References; Index

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisMainstream feminist discourse has failed to fully engage with commercial sex work. In a series of groundbreaking, previously unpublished essays, The Business of Sex corrects this lacuna. Moving beyond the traditional feminist focus on slavery and trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and other health issues, the contributors to this volume engage fully with the political and theoretical implications of sex work. Dismissing old antagonisms, they argue that feminism - thanks to its role in revolutionizing perspectives on sexuality and labor - is a natural ally for the sex workers' rights movement. In the process, these innovative scholars provocatively critique the dominant moral paradigm of heterosexual monogamy, which has created a pervasive "victim" discourse and limited our understanding of sex work's complex realities. Drawing on firsthand stories of sex workers and prostitutes, this volume gives voice to newly articulated movements such as "whore feminism" and "queer feminism" - feminisms that have the potential to move discussions about sex work onto new and fruitful terrain.

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Book SynopsisAn innovative collection of essays on the turmoil spreading across South Asia, Contesting Nation sheds light on how violence—in wars of direct and indirect conquest—marks the present. Featuring contributions by distinguished South Asian women scholars, the book offers inspired, gendered, and contested histories of the present, exploring nation-making and its intersections with projects of militarization and cultural assertion, modernization, and globalization.The contributors to this volume consider such turbulent events as the Gujarat carnage of 2002, post-9/11 mobilizations, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, shedding light on the force with which brutal events encompass lives and disfigure communities. This powerful book examines the very borders such brutality maintains and its intimate and lasting effects on bodies and memories.

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Book SynopsisNortheast India, connected to the rest of the country by only a narrow strip of land, has long been a site of tension between people native to the region - many of whom have long demanded more political independence - and representatives of the mainland and the Indian state. In 2004, one of the region's notorious paramilitary groups famously arrested and killed a young woman named Thangjam Manorama. This collection takes its inspiration from the mass demonstrations that arose after her death and the unprecedented protests against the violence that has wracked the area. In a diverse series of reflections on the state of the Northeast in the wake of these events, the contributors address such topics as nationhood, identity, and the complex factors that alienate the region from the rest of India. Their intensely personal responses and informed political assessments illuminate the changes, asymmetries, and fault lines that continue to cause potentially violent rifts. Some of these writers, academics, and activists grew up in the Northeast, while others are outsiders - but all share a passion for the area and an intense desire for peace.Trade Review"It's impossible to cover the import of all the essays in the span of one review. But in short, the book is a brave attempt to cover just about everything there is to know about the region from a concerned citizen's point of view." (Susan Abraham, DNA)"

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Book SynopsisIn her detailed readings of a wide range of Indian writers-including Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others - Geetanjali Singh Chanda focuses on domestic spaces in women's fiction. The house is not merely a backdrop, but often almost a character itself, one that bears witness to the changes in the protagonists' lives. Chanda shows how women in these fictional homes find ways to transform restrictive, segregated spaces into a potentially empowering "womenspace," one that can be found in bungalows and apartments alike. The book also analyzes the anxiety that still accompanies writing about India in English, and the many concerns about identity, language, nationalism, family, and community that are played out in the home. An ambitious mapping of Indian English women's literature, Indian Women in the House of Fiction claims an important space for its subject in the larger framework of world literatures.Trade Review"Chanda's intention... is to explore how the trope of the 'house' acts more than just a background in Indian writing in English by women writers. Rather, the 'house' bears witness and is in many ways responsible for the changes in the lives of its women protagonists." (Mala Pandurang, The Book Review)"

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Book SynopsisConflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence elucidates the centrality of political and foundational violence in the governance of conflicted democracies in the postcolony, calling attention to the urgent need for transformation. Spectacular and quotidian gendered and sexualized violence by states and collectives holds in place fraught and unjust histories and relations between elites and subalterns, majoritarian subjects and non-dominant "Others." At the intersections of nationalist and decolonial confrontations, such violence regularizes states of emergency and exception. Through oral history, archival, and legal research undertaken over three years, this interdisciplinary work underscores the need for transitional and transformative justice mechanisms in conflicted democracies to address protracted conflict (focusing on their internal dimensions) and social upheaval. India serves as a case in point, exemplified by ongoing and recent conflicts in Jammu and Kashmir and the Punjab and episodic social upheavals in Gujarat (in 2002) and Odisha (in 2008). Victim-survivor narratives of counter-memory, historical records, and legal analyses of formative cases detail the depth and texture of social suffering and illustrate the inadequacy and inhumanity of official responses to events of extraordinary violence. Expanding on methods in justice and accountability and espousing the right to heal, scholars and practitioners raise critical questions regarding the state, civil society, and diverse institutions, and the most elemental of constituents: victim-survivors. Contributors: Angana P. Chatterji, Mallika Kaur, Roxanna Altholz, Paola Bacchetta, Rajvinder Singh Bains, Mihir Desai, Laurel E. Fletcher, Parvez Imroz, Jeremy J. Sarkin, and Pwi Wu.

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Book SynopsisJuly 15, 2004, Imphal (Manipur, India): An amazing scene unfolds in front of Kangla Fort, the headquarters of the Assam Rifles, a unit of the Indian army. Soldiers and officers watch aghast as twelve women, all in their sixties and seventies, position themselves in front of the gates and then, one by one, strip themselves naked. The imas, the mothers of Manipur, are in a cold fury, protesting the custodial rape and murder by the army of Thangjam Manorama, a 32-year-old woman suspected of being a militant. The women hold aloft banners and shout, “Indian Army Rape Us” and “Take Our Flesh.” Never has this happened before and the army is appalled. Very soon, news of the protest goes viral. People around the country are shocked. Can this be possible? A naked protest in India by mothers? In this unusual book, journalist Teresa Rehman tells the story of these twelve women, the momentous decision they took, and how they carried it out with precision and care. In doing so she connects the reader to the broader history of conflict-torn Manipur and the courage and resistance of its people—in particular its women.

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