Subjects Archives: Feminism

Black women in the French-speaking world have been marginalized throughout history and even if they did not lack autonomy within the family unit (which often they did), they certainly suffered as a result of their colonial status. This often created double oppression.

Important progress has been made, but now is the time to place women’s rights at the heart of transnational environmental law.

The triple day thesis of motherhood is conceptualized as a mother who engages in the reproductive work of childbearing and childrearing (the single day), in addition to waged work (the double day) and self-reproductive work (the triple day).

The world lost a trailblazing thinker and feminist this week. Professor and social activist Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, passed away at the age of 69.

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the gendered aspect of pandemics; however, addressing the gendered implications of the COVID-19 pandemic comprehensively and effectively requires a planetary health perspective that embraces systems thinking to inequalities.

Two generations of Americans have no experience of the world before Roe v. Wade, during which obtaining an abortion was a surreptitious, often criminalized process, sometimes ending in physical mutilation and even death, and the right of women to make such decisions was subordinated to the reactionary ministrations of police, priests and politicians.

Jayati Ghosh finds in a UN Women report a blueprint for an economy which serves the public—rather than the other way around.

“We are seeing massive ripple effects across the country for other states taking on displaced patients.”

In her new book ‘African Feminisms – a decolonial history’, the Senegalese scholar-activist Rama Salla Dieng interviews feminist activists about their work, struggles and lives. Interviewed by Coumba Kane, Dieng speaks about what it means to be a feminist in Africa today.

The theses are a working tool and an insurance at the same time of what we are and where we want to go to, while both the path and the goal are open for joint discussion and thus for change.

For women inside prison, the fight for survival is less physical than psychological.

In the macho, back-country world of Sertanejo music, Mendonça demanded respect for women.

Erika Takeo and Rohan Rice reflect on the advancement of women in Nicaragua since the Sandinista revolution.

The work performed by women, particularly work in the household and in the health sector, has received much attention in feminist and left-wing debate in recent years.

Without a doubt, the global pandemic of COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on the economy and, consequently, on the population.

Indian peasants and agricultural workers remain in the midst of a country-wide agitation sparked by the proposal of three farm bills that were then signed into law by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party government in September 2020.

The current situation might present an opportunity to strengthen mass movements and to steer the focus towards the rights and livelihoods of women and workers. The ongoing Indian farmers’ movement, which started before the pandemic and continues to stay strong, offers the opportunity to steer the national discourse towards such an agenda.

In 1922, the great radical journalist Louise Bryant observed that Lenin drew great strength from the women close to him. Her observation contrasts sharply with the exploitative Lenin who has come to dominate historical studies and biographies.

This article discusses Susan Ferguson’s Women and Work and how it advances contemporary debates about social reproduction within and beyond Marxist feminism. In particular, I emphasise its call for avoiding hierarchising struggles against oppression and those against exploitation, and for centring a dual-terrains approach. – Maud Perrier

I am active with the Prison for Women (P4W) Memorial Collective which has been fighting for a Memorial Garden at the site of the now closed Prison for Women, and a Gallery where the women’s art and writing can be seen in order to give some context to their lives and deaths. We also agitate to improve prison and parole conditions as a harm reduction tactic in order to alleviate some of the suffering, but always within the context of the abolition of prisons and capitalism as the goal, the light that guides us through the darkness.