The Construction of Femininity in a Postcolonial State PDF Download

Author: Kho Moi
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 162196793X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Author: Lynn Thomas
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520936647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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In more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance—and complex ramifications—of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Author: Ee Moi Kho
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781624997792
Category : EDUCATION
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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"Singapore, the "economic miracle" has thrived in spite of its lack of natural resources and defied all odds to become a first world economy within a very short span of time. Women in Singapore appear to have benefited much from Singapore's rapid development. It is fashionable to subscribe to liberal feminist thought that women have the same capabilities as men and women's second-class status is due to the lack of equal economic and educational opportunities being given to them. The solution is to provide girls with opportunities for education and employment so as to enable them to enter into a full range of professions. A closer examination of the statistics reveals that the view that access to education empowers women to achieve equal status with men is too simplistic. The question of schooling for empowerment or for subordination is an important issue that this book seeks to address"--

Author: Sangeeta Ray
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822382806
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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En-Gendering India offers an innovative interpretation of the role that gender played in defining the Indian state during both the colonial and postcolonial eras. Focusing on both British and Indian literary texts—primarily novels—produced between 1857 and 1947, Sangeeta Ray examines representations of "native" Indian women and shows how these representations were deployed to advance notions of Indian self-rule as well as to defend British imperialism. Through her readings of works by writers including Bankimchandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath Tagore, Harriet Martineau, Flora Annie Steel, Anita Desai, and Bapsi Sidhaa, Ray demonstrates that Indian women were presented as upper class and Hindu, an idealization that paradoxically served the needs of both colonial and nationalist discourses. The Indian nation’s goal of self-rule was expected to enable women’s full participation in private and public life. On the other hand, British colonial officials rendered themselves the protectors of passive Indian women against their “savage” male countrymen. Ray shows how the native woman thus became a symbol for both an incipient Indian nation and a fading British Empire. In addition, she reveals how the figure of the upper-class Hindu woman created divisions with the nationalist movement itself by underscoring caste, communal, and religious differences within the newly emerging state. As such, Ray’s study has important implications for discussions about nationalism, particularly those that address the concepts of identity and nationalism. Building on recent scholarship in feminism and postcolonial studies, En-Gendering India will be of interest to scholars in those fields as well as to specialists in nationalism and nation-building and in Victorian, colonial, and postcolonial literature and culture.

Author: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134886527
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author: Antonia Wulff
Publisher: Brill
ISBN: 9789004430358
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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"For the third time in three decades world leaders reaffirmed their promise of "Education For All" when adopting Sustainable Development Goal 4 in 2015. It is the most far-reaching commitment to quality and equity in education so far, yet, there is no consensus on what the agenda means in practice. With a decade left until the 2030 deadline, Grading Goal Four calls upon the education community to engage more thoughtfully and critically with SDG 4 and related efforts. As an ever-growing number of actors and initiatives claim to contribute to its achievement, it is becoming clear that the ambitious but broad priorities within the goal are vulnerable to cherry-picking and misrepresentation, placing it at the heart of tensions between instrumentalist and rights-based approaches to education. This text, a critical analysis of SDG 4, provides a framework for examining trends and developments in education globally. As the first volume that examines early implementation efforts under SDG 4, Grading Goal Four formulates a critique along with strategies for moving forward. By scrutinising the challenges, tensions and power dynamics shaping SDG 4, it advances rights-based perspectives and strategies for effective implementation and builds capacity for strengthened monitoring and analysis of the goal"--

Author: Susan Harris Rimmer
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1785363921
Category : Feminism
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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For almost 30 years, scholars and advocates have been exploring the interaction and potential between the rights and well-being of women and the promise of international law. This collection posits that the next frontier for international law is increasing its relevance, beneficence and impact for women in the developing world, and to deal with a much wider range of issues through a feminist lens.

Author: Emanuela Lombardo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317014537
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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What is symbolic representation? Since Hanna Pitkin’s seminal The Concept of Representation, the symbolic has been the least studied dimension of political representation. Innovatively adopting a discursive approach, this book - the first full-length treatment of symbolic representation - focuses on gender issues to tackle important questions such as: What are women and men symbols of, and how is gender constructed in policy discourse? It studies what functions symbolic representation fulfils in the construction of gender, what social roles get legitimized in policy discourse, and how this affects power constellations, ultimately revealing much about the relation between symbolic, descriptive, and substantive representation. Emanuela Lombardo and Petra Meier draw on theories of symbolic representation and gender, as well as rich primary material about political debates on labour and care issues, partnership and reproductive rights, gender violence, and quotas. Using this original data, the authors show that reconsidering symbolic representation from a discursive perspective makes explicit issues of (in)equality embedded within particular constructions, as well as their consequences for political representation and gender equality. This important exploration raises relevant new questions regarding the representation of gender that form valuable contributions to the fields of political science, political theory, sociology, and gender studies.

Author: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822384833
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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The Scandal of the State is a revealing study of the relationship between the postcolonial, democratic Indian nation-state and Indian women’s actual needs and lives. Well-known for her work combining feminist theory and postcolonial studies, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan shows how the state is central to understanding women’s identities and how, reciprocally, women and “women’s issues” affect the state’s role and function. She argues that in India law and citizenship define for women not only the scope of political rights but also cultural identity and everyday life. Sunder Rajan delineates the postcolonial state in implicit contrast with the “enlightened,” postfeminist neoliberal state in the West. Her analysis wrestles with complex social realities, taking into account the influence of age, ethnicity, religion, and class on individual and group identities as well as the shifting, heterogeneous nature of the state itself. The Scandal of the State develops through a series of compelling case studies, each of which centers around an incident exposing the contradictory position of the Indian state vis-à-vis its female citizens and, ultimately, the inadequacy of its commitment to women’s rights. Sunder Rajan focuses on the custody battle over a Muslim child bride, the compulsory sterilization of mentally retarded women in state institutional care, female infanticide in Tamilnadu, prostitution as labor rather than crime, and the surrender of the female outlaw Phoolan Devi. She also looks at the ways the Uniform Civil Code presented many women with a stark choice between allegiance to their religion and community or the secular assertion of individual rights. Rich with theoretical acumen and activist passion, The Scandal of the State is a powerful critique of the mutual dependence of women and the state on one another in the specific context of a postcolonial modernity.

Author: Elizabeth Thompson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231106603
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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First, a colonial welfare state emerged by World War II that recognized social rights of citizens to health, education, and labor protection.