Gender and Activism. Women’s Voices in Political Debate

This Yearbook attends to various ways in which women were active and organized themselves in order to question sex and gender related issues in the political arena. Covering a diverse range of cultures and political situations the Yearbook discusses how women protested against perceived religious suppression; actively participated in local democratic political institutions whilst not really changing gender-roles; or discussed experienced discrepancies between socialism and feminism. How do women find their ways in democratic systems of governance? What do these systems offer them in terms of emancipation and involvement in political decision making affecting their lives?     

Contents: MIEKE AERTS, Introduction   KATRINE SMIET, One Size Fits All? FEMEN and the Limits of Secular Feminism   SENEM YILDIRIM, The Case of Female mukhtars in Turkey: the ‘glass ceiling’ of local politics   ELENA BORGHI, ‘The time has now come for women to review and reform this system’. Female subjectivity and the debate over child marriage in late colonial India   Showcase: MYRIAM EVERARD, A colour portrait of feminist Rosa Manus from 1927   Interview: JOSEPHINE VAN DEN BENT, Fighting for female voices in a patriarchical society. Women’s activism in post-revolutionary Egypt   ULLA JANSZ, Women workers contested. Socialists versus feminists at the National exhibition of women’s labour in The Hague, 1898   Forum: MIEKE AERTS, Linda Gordon. Forty years of historical research on feminism and democracy   Sources: MARJAN GROOT, Visual democracy: posters on women in politics   KARLIJN OLIJSLAGER, Motherhood, domestic display, and democracy in the exhibition ‘The Dutch Women 1898-1948’   MANON PERRY, Feminist Opposition to Abortion