Chaste Wives and Prostitute Sisters

Chaste Wives and Prostitute Sisters PDF Author: Anuja Agrawal
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000084124
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Book Description
This book is an anthropological study of the unusual coincidence of prostitution and patriarchy among an extremely marginalized group in north India, the Bedias, who are also a de-notified community. It is the first detailed account of the implications of a systematic practice of familial prostitution on the kinship structures and marriage practices of a community. This starkly manifests among the Bedias in the clear separation between sisters and daughters who engage in prostitution and wives and daughters-in-law who do not. The Bedias exemplify a situation in which prostitution of young unmarried women is the mainstay of the familial economy of an entire social group. Tracing the recent origins of the practice in the community, the author goes on to explore the manner in which this familial economy manifests itself in the lives of individual women and the kind of family groupings it produces. She then examines the repercussion this economy has on the lives of Bedia men, how the problem of their marriage is resolved, and how the Bedia wives become repositories of female purity which otherwise stands jeopardized by Bedia sisters engaged in prostitution.

Women, Political Struggles and Gender Equality in South Asia

Women, Political Struggles and Gender Equality in South Asia PDF Author: M. Alston
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137390573
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
A brutal gang-rape of a young woman in India in 2012 caused a global outcry against rising brutal violence against women. In response to the young woman's death and the protests that followed, the contributors analyze the position of women in South Asia, the issue of violence, women's political activism and gender inequalities.

Women in Developing Countries

Women in Developing Countries PDF Author: Karen L. Kinnear
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598844261
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
This book provides a much-needed survey of the discrimination and violence against women in developing countries, and identifies the literature and resources available about this topic. Because of improvements in communication technologies, the West has become increasingly aware of horrific examples of ongoing discrimination and violence against individual women in developing countries. As a result, more attention is being paid to the gender bias and hardship that women in developing countries face in their everyday lives, and the importance of these women in economic development and the alleviation of poverty is starting to be recognized. Women in Developing Countries: A Reference Handbook addresses topics like the status of women in developing countries; their access to education, health care, and the political process; their legal status; the extent to which they are considered property; female genital mutilation and other harmful practices; and other timely issues. This book also provides statistical information, data on selected nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other organizations set up to improve the lives and advance the status of women, and sources of further information in print and nonprint media.

Women, Law and Culture

Women, Law and Culture PDF Author: Jocelynne A. Scutt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319449389
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
This book explores cultural constructs, societal demands and political and philosophical underpinnings that position women in the world. It illustrates the way culture controls women's place in the world and how cultural constraints are not limited to any one culture, country, ethnicity, race, class or status. Written by scholars from a wide range of specialists in law, sociology, anthropology, popular and cultural studies, history, communications, film and sex and gender, this study provides an authoritative take on different cultures, cultural demands and constraints, contradictions and requirements for conformity generating conflict. Women, Law and Culture is distinctive because it recognises that no particular culture singles out women for 'special' treatment, rules and requirements; rather, all do. Highlighting the way law and culture are intimately intertwined, impacting on women – whatever their country and social and economic status – this book will be of great interest to scholars of law, women’s and gender studies and media studies.

Why Gender?

Why Gender? PDF Author: Jude Browne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108833373
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
World-famous scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds each consider the same question - why is gender so important for understanding the world in which we live?

Sexuality and Public Space in India

Sexuality and Public Space in India PDF Author: Carmel Christy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317312643
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
The topic of sexuality and gender within the South Asian context is timely and widely discussed across a variety of academic disciplines. Since the end of the last century, there have been debates in the cultural sphere in India on issues concerning Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender people’s rights, gender, sex workers’ rights and caste. There has also been an explicit visibility for sexuality in the form of discussion around intimate scenes in films, advertisements and moral concerns around pre-marital heterosexual relationships and same-sex relationships. This book brings out the modalities through which explicit visibility of sexuality gets constituted in the public space of India after the 1990s. The specificities through which relations of gender/ sexuality and caste get constituted and performed in regional media provide significant entry points to an understanding of larger structures and the ever-present fissures through which these larger structures emerge. Focussing on the southern state of Kerala, the book investigates women’s sexuality and caste through a number of case studies: the Suryanelli rape case, neology in the media and the debates around the life narratives of Nalini Jameela, a sex worker. The book does not stop at representational practices as it also looks at the negotiations between the subject and her represented figures which is a significant addition to the existing body of work in the field of media and gender studies. Sexuality and Public Space in India is a careful interrogation of the mass-mediatized space of contemporary public discourse around sexuality. It will be of interest to academics in South Asian Studies, Sociology, Anthropology and Gender Studies.

International Journal of Cross-Cultural Sudies: Vol.2, No.1

International Journal of Cross-Cultural Sudies: Vol.2, No.1 PDF Author:
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 1612336094
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 43

Book Description


Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor

Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor PDF Author: Prabha Kotiswaran
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691142513
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by examining the political economies and legal ethnographies of two archetypical urban sex markets in India. Kotiswaran conducted in-depth fieldwork among sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's largest red-light area, and Tirupati, a temple town in southern India. Providing new insights into the lives of these women--many of whom are demanding the respect and legal protection that other workers get--Kotiswaran builds a persuasive theoretical case for recognizing these women's sexual labor. Moving beyond standard feminist discourse on prostitution, she draws on a critical genealogy of materialist feminism for its sophisticated vocabulary of female reproductive and sexual labor, and uses a legal realist approach to show why criminalization cannot succeed amid the informal social networks and economic structures of sex markets. Based on this, Kotiswaran assesses the law's redistributive potential by analyzing the possible economic consequences of partial decriminalization, complete decriminalization, and legalization. She concludes with a theory of sex work from a postcolonial materialist feminist perspective.

Heteronormativity, Passionate Aesthetics and Symbolic Subversion in Asia

Heteronormativity, Passionate Aesthetics and Symbolic Subversion in Asia PDF Author: Saskia Wieringa
Publisher: Apollo Books
ISBN: 9781845195502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
"This book examines life trajectories among three categories of women living beyond the bounds of heteronormativity in Jakarta and Delhi, two major cities with substantively different religious and social values: women who have lost their husbands, either through divorce or death; sex workers; and young, urban lesbians. The Indian state is constitutionally committed to secularism and equal respect to all regions despite right-wing Hindu fundamentalism.The Indonesian state is constitutionally secular, but religion plays a large role in public life and is embedded in regulations that strongly impact people's private lives. Recently, there have been strong political currents to impose stricter Islamic codes. The public arena of sexual politics, in which the media play an important role, is explored in both cities"--

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Prostitution

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Prostitution PDF Author: Scott Cunningham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199915253
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 784

Book Description
Prostitution bears the unique title of being both the "world's oldest profession" and one of the least understood occupations. Unlike most of the crime and family literature, prostitution appears to have all the features of traditional markets: prices, supply and demand considerations, variety in the organizational structure, and policy relevance. Despite this, economists have largely ignored prostitution in their research and writings. This has been changing, however, over the last twenty years as greater access to data has enabled economists to build better theories and gain a better understanding of the organization of sex market. The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Prostitution fills the gap in our understanding. It brings together many of the top researchers in the field who explain how the prostitution markets are organized across space and time, the role of technology in shaping labor supply and demand, the intersection of prostitution with trafficking, and the optimal use of law enforcement. What makes the material unique is its explicit focus on economics as the primary methodology for organizing our understanding of prostitution. The Handbook brings to scholars' attention for the first time a collection of original writings on prostitution that provides an overview of what is known and what is not known in this area. Researchers with an interest in underground markets, labor economics, risky behaviors, marriage, and gender will find the book's contents illuminating and path breaking.