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Revising the Patriarchal Texts of Husband and Wife in Real and Fictive Worlds

CLAUDIA TATE

in Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine’s Text at the Turn of the Century

This chapter begins with snippets from the works of Pauline E. Hopkins, Ella Wright-Pleasant, and Josephine Turpin Washington on the gender rites and the higher education of black women. These depict ... More

This chapter begins with snippets from the works of Pauline E. Hopkins, Ella Wright-Pleasant, and Josephine Turpin Washington on the gender rites and the higher education of black women. These depict black female empowerment despite problems of gender rites and education. The woman is described as a woman and not a man who possesses qualities of intelligence and culture. The chapter examines in detail the gender rites and the high education of black women in the late nineteenth century. It gives an introduction to the mediation of liberal and conservative gender roles for wives and husbands in the domestic novels. In summary, the following are tackled in this chapter: gender rites and the higher education of black women, gender rites and fictive texts, and love as a strategy for revising spousal roles.Less

Unexpected Heroes of Feminist Cinema

Terri Murray

in Studying Feminist Film Theory

This chapter challenges critics' readings of films as ‘sexist’, looking at two illustrative examples: Paul Verhoeven and Spike Lee. Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992) was widely regarded as ... More

This chapter challenges critics' readings of films as ‘sexist’, looking at two illustrative examples: Paul Verhoeven and Spike Lee. Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992) was widely regarded as misogynistic and ‘lesbophobic’. Basic Instinct is a neo-noir film that scandalously refuses to conform to the patriarchal rule of ‘compensating moral values’. Moreover, its visual pleasures are deliberately constructed against the grain of male voyeuristic pleasures and offer women (especially lesbian women) a rare opportunity to dissect and ridicule male sexism, homophobia, and voyeuristic power. Verhoeven's Elle (2016) is a much more subtle and complex critique of how women's self-image is ‘mediated’ by patriarchal culture, and the film makes explicit or oblique references to tabloid journalism, the gaming industry, and religion in the construction of a total culture that presents women as ‘others’ not only to men but also to themselves. Meanwhile, Spike Lee has been a frequent target for the ‘sexist’ label. The chapter argues that this is unfair, given Lee's relatively frequent attempts to make films about female sexual empowerment (or the causes of female sexual disempowerment). The three examples of She's Gotta Have It (1986), She Hate Me (2004), and BlacKkKlansman (2018) suggest that Lee has in various ways attempted to represent females as empowered sexual agents, and to address social double standards erected by men to possess women through the possession of their bodies.Less

The Erotics of Change: Female Sexuality, Afro-Caribbean Spirituality, and a “Postmodern” Caribbean Identity in It Begins with Tears

Donna Aza Weir-Soley

in Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings

Opal Palmer Adisa's first novel, It Begins with Tears, represents a more contemporary revision of the Janie paradigm. Set in a fictional village in rural Jamaica, Adisa's novel interrogates ... More

Opal Palmer Adisa's first novel, It Begins with Tears, represents a more contemporary revision of the Janie paradigm. Set in a fictional village in rural Jamaica, Adisa's novel interrogates contesting ideologies and values vis-à-vis notions of progress and modernity in the late twentieth century. Adisa's text uses a female-centered, Afro–Caribbean spirituality as the bridge between two competing ideologies (modernity and tradition) whose oppositional imperatives threaten the cohesion and stability of the community. Drawing upon the syncretic religious traditions of Jamaica, Adisa uses strong female characters modeled after West African orishas and linked with nature to demonstrate the coterminous relationship between individual female empowerment and sociopolitical viability for the community. Adisa's codification of the erotic as both spiritual and sexual energy takes place at several levels within the text.Less

Girl Power: Cash Transfers and Adolescent Welfare: Evidence from a Cluster-Randomized Experiment in Malawi

Sarah Baird, Ephraim Chirwa, Jacobus de Hoop, and Berk Özler

in African Successes, Volume II: Human Capital

Interventions targeting adolescent girls are seen as key to breaking the cycle of poverty in developing countries. Policies that enable them to reach their full potential can have a strong impact not ... More

Interventions targeting adolescent girls are seen as key to breaking the cycle of poverty in developing countries. Policies that enable them to reach their full potential can have a strong impact not only on their own wellbeing, but also that of future generations. This paper summarizes the short-term impacts of a cash transfer program on the empowerment of adolescent girls in Malawi during and immediately after the two-year intervention. The program, which transferred cash directly to school-age girls and their parents, had effects on a broad range of important domains–including increased access to financial resources, improved schooling outcomes, decreased teen pregnancies and early marriages, better health–and generally enabled beneficiaries to improve their agency within their households. Underlying these impacts, the experiment revealed differences in program effects between young women in school at the start of the intervention and those who were not, as well as between young women who received cash transfers conditional on regular school attendance and those who received cash unconditionally. The results point to the potential role that cash transfer programs can play in the lives of adolescent girls in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the heterogeneity of effects under different program designs.Less

Diaspora Philanthropy: The Case of Sikhs Giving Back to Punjab

Verne A. Dusenbery and Darshan S. Tatla

in Sikhism in Global Context

This chapter investigates the philanthropy of contemporary Sikh diaspora in Punjab, a practice of giving that goes back to the earliest decades of Sikh migration from Punjab. Overseas Sikhs have ... More

This chapter investigates the philanthropy of contemporary Sikh diaspora in Punjab, a practice of giving that goes back to the earliest decades of Sikh migration from Punjab. Overseas Sikhs have become connected with Punjab in economic, political, and cultural matters through patronage, financial assistance, and new social practices brought from abroad. The study of diaspora philanthropy becomes a site for analyzing the transmission of material resources, information and values. Some of the issues concerning Sikh diaspora philanthropy in Punjab are then explained. Differences about how, where, and for what purpose money is given reflect the different existing resource bases and the different social make-up of the givers as well as the historical relationship of groups in each block. While some efforts have been made to encourage female empowerment, Sikh diaspora philanthropy seems to act ‘both to challenge and to perpetuate gendered norms within Punjabi society’. The author concludes by pointing out that today’s diaspora philanthropy is less likely to be directed towards religious places.Less

The Lost Connection with The Feminine

Anna Fedele

in Looking for Mary Magdalene: Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France

This chapter describes the first gathering of each pilgrimage group and explores the way in which the trip forms part of the pilgrims’ quest for the feminine. The most important meta-empirical beings ... More

This chapter describes the first gathering of each pilgrimage group and explores the way in which the trip forms part of the pilgrims’ quest for the feminine. The most important meta-empirical beings related to the pilgrimage are Mary Magdalene, the Goddess and Mother Earth. Drawing on the writings of Marina Warner, the pilgrims conceptualize Mary Magdalene as a model for female empowerment both complementary and opposed to the Virgin Mary. Neo-shamanism has deeply influenced these pilgrims’ theories and practices, in particular two so-called indigenous traditions from Mexico (the Concheros) and the Andes of Peru.Less

Purity

Helena Liu

in Redeeming Leadership: An Anti-Racist Feminist Intervention

Having interrogated hegemonic white masculinity in the previous chapter, this chapter presents a critique of white femininity and the rise of postfeminism. Entrenched in imperialist notions of ... More

Having interrogated hegemonic white masculinity in the previous chapter, this chapter presents a critique of white femininity and the rise of postfeminism. Entrenched in imperialist notions of beauty, delicacy and purity, this chapter examines the fraught performances of white femininity in our current age as it attempts to balance between asserting dominance and maintaining an idealised innocence. The chapter investigates the ways organisations prioritise a white patriarchal feminine subject, for example, how research of women in leadership has overwhelmingly focussed on the needs and interests of elite professional women at the expense of queer, working-class and non-white women. Consequently, organisations waving the banner for ‘gender equality’ can often end up reproducing heterosexism, classism and racism. Carolyn McCall and Sheryl Sandberg’s media profiles are analysed to explore white femininities in leadership.Less

Kālī's New Frontiers: A Hindu Goddess on the Internet

Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal

in Encountering Kālī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West

This chapter begins with two depictions of Kālī, both by Western women, exemplifying the extremes of possible interpretation. The first figure is similar to India's “calendar art” style of portraying ... More

This chapter begins with two depictions of Kālī, both by Western women, exemplifying the extremes of possible interpretation. The first figure is similar to India's “calendar art” style of portraying the four-armed Goddess, whereas the second figure is reflective of Western views of the Goddess as powerfully sexual. This chapter discusses Kālī on the Internet, using sources such as websites, Internet news groups, and electronic magazines. Feminist and New Age proponents of Kālī have been criticized by Hindus living in the West as representative of a wave of neocolonialists; to some such critics, these Western interpreters and appropriators of the Goddess are every bit as insidious as those of the past two centuries. This chapter looks at Kālī-associated themes on the Internet, including Kālī and female empowerment, Tantra and sex, Kālī-centered New Age rituals, and Kālī in dance, theater, art, and advertising.Less

Matching under Transferable Utility: Applications

Pierre-André Chiappori

in Matching with Transfers: The Economics of Love and Marriage

This chapter considers two examples of applications of matching models under transferable utility (TU). The first example deals with the legalization of abortion by virtue of Roe v. Wade and the ... More

This chapter considers two examples of applications of matching models under transferable utility (TU). The first example deals with the legalization of abortion by virtue of Roe v. Wade and the feminist claim that it empowered all women. The second example deals with the discrepancy between male and female demand for higher education over the last decades. After providing an overview of Roe v. Wade and how it resulted in female empowerment, the chapter describes the model that takes into account preferences and budget constraints, stable matching on the marriage market, and changes in birth control technology. It then examines gender differences in the demand for higher education using the CIW (Chiappori, Iyigun, and Weiss) model, with a focus on equilibrium, preferences for singlehood, comparative statics, empirical implementation, and the Low model showing that higher education results in a deterministic drop in fertility.Less

Epilogue: Daughters of Feminism

in Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women's Health in the Second Wave

This chapter focuses on the daughters of the feminist generation in the United States. These women are unlikely to be involved in consciousness-raising groups and formulating strategies for revolt ... More

This chapter focuses on the daughters of the feminist generation in the United States. These women are unlikely to be involved in consciousness-raising groups and formulating strategies for revolt because they learned feminism not from demonstrations and marches, but from school and through the popular media. Feminism's attempt to create a universal body of knowledge out of a plurality of individual bodies has not been entirely successful. Childbirth remains on contested terrain and female empowerment in relation to birth was reduced to epidural anesthesia and elective cesarean section.Less