Search Results

This chapter examines women’s representation in Bulgaria’s national assembly. It is argued that women’s representation can be improved when parties become unified organizations and when women achieve leadership in these parties. However, the volatile party system and the uncertainty of voter support has made parties hesitant to nominate women in competitive list positions.

This chapter examines the variations in women’s representation in Russian regional assemblies. A study of representation levels according to economic regions and distance from the Moscow-St. Petersburg axis show that women have done much better in peripheral regions than in the central regions. Political institutions such as the electoral system, district size, and the level of support for political reform play influence the variation in female representation. Political culture, measured indirectly using dominant religion, also plays a major role in women’s access to regional parliaments.

The shortfall of female representatives in the DUP is often blamed on the reluctance of women to stand for election, as opposed to the existence of any barriers to participating in the political arena. This chapter challenges this assumption and explores how supply (family commitments, self-confidence) and demand factors (party selection procedures, voting system) help explain the constraints on women representing the DUP. These factors, whilst not specific to the DUP, exacerbate the problem of lack of gender balance in the membership. Drawing upon interviews and survey data this chapter examines the role and opinion of women at various levels of the DUP to gain their perspectives on whether there is discrimination against women in public life, the position of women in the party, and how they feel female representation could be improved. The DUP primarily encourages a ‘gender-neutral’ position, which emphasizes the principle of merit as a method of selection, as opposed to the implementation of gender quotas.

The chapter introduces and historicises the key debates about the female action hero, before offering an extended investigation of the representation of the female action hero in contemporary action cinema. Identifying an action heroine who is physically and economically empowered while also sexualized, the chapter argues that this figure is defined by her proximity to postfeminist discourses of female power and sexual agency, while suggesting that the potentially unsettling prospect of a physically violent woman is minimised by traditional containment strategies that locate her in comic or overtly fantastical settings. Using Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Kill Bill as illustrative case studies, the chapter shows how, in this dominant representational mode, images of physical stress and damage are suppressed for ideological reasons, but also argues that more ‘untidy’ forms of female physical agency are emerging in the margins of the mainstream.

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.

The lack of female judicial appointments in the history of international courts has led to the introduction of obligations and targets for nominating/appointing authorities to select and elect women candidates. Compliance with these obligations remains a challenge and the women who aspire to these offices must not only have the requisite qualifications, but also pass through the nomination and election processes, which can involve a high level of political manoeuvring. Mentoring, deliberate mobilization, and gatekeeping may also play a role. Other important elements that may affect a woman’s international judicial career include socio-economic factors, geo-cultural politics, the political will to nominate women, and a blend of contextual experiences, institutional opportunities, and personal agency. This chapter probes these dynamics, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities for women who seek careers on the international bench, focusing specifically on the unique experiences of female African judges in international and regional courts.

Efforts to improve the representation of women in international dispute settlement continue to face significant challenges. While there is an increasing acknowledgement that the lack of gender diversity needs to be addressed, this abstract concern has not translated into a meaningful increase in the number of women being appointed by parties to international courts and tribunals. This Chapter focuses on the processes for the selection and appointment of arbitrators and judges ad hoc on public international law courts and tribunals. It explores what those processes reveal about the different layers of prejudice that female candidates face and their combined effect in creating and sustaining barriers to equal opportunities for women. Identifying these layers of prejudice from a processual perspective can assist with formulating practical measures that could be taken by different stakeholders to address each of the specific barriers. The Chapter also highlights the special role and responsibility that counsel for appointing parties have in granting equal opportunities for women in each individual appointment process.

This chapter assesses what difference it makes that Neil Marshall's party is women only, and investigates The Descent's contribution to the thorny issue of the representation of women in horror films. Marshall admits that his original concept for the film involved a mixed group, and that he was attracted to a colleague's off-hand suggestion of making the cavers an all-female group for its novelty. This highlights the first, obvious point: it is a selling point, a distinguishing feature. As Marshall points out in 'The Making of The Descent', the film is unique among what Marshall describes as 'action horror' films in having an all-female cast. Given that the cast is all-female — and young, athletic and attractive to boot — Marshall's treatment of them is remarkably desexualised, arguably working against this selling point, for at least some of the film's audience. The decision to present the women neutrally — not only desexualised but also, perhaps, defeminised — relates to the underlying themes in the film.

This chapter discusses the selection process made by the National Candidate Commission in order to provide a final candidate list for the national elections of 2002–2003. This chapter focuses on the 2002–2003 elections which provide a great opportunity to examine closely the Cuban electoral process. Whereas previous studies on Cuban elections lacked gender perspective, this chapter focuses on the gender composition of the various assemblies involved in the Cuban national elections wherein female representation on the local and national level varies considerably due to positive discrimination. The chapter also examines the candidate nomination process and presents a detailed election results for the municipal and national level.

This chapter analyses the typification and standardisation of the voice in Spanish cinema, which is argued as the result of a long history of film dubbing, with its strict codification of vocal types according to gender and role. This practice has resulted in a series of unwritten rules and expectations that continue to shape and restrict the kinds of voices that Spanish audiences hear on screen. Under these norms, while non-standard voices may be permitted and are even cultivated for comic and character parts, leading roles continue to demand what the chapter calls the ‘phonogenic’ expression of unproblematically feminine and masculine identities. With her unmistakable, high-pitched voice, the chapter shows how Gracita Morales was inevitably slotted into supporting roles, her child-like affect and lack of verbal inhibition put to classic comic ends as weapons used to skewer the pretensions of a would-be upwardly mobile and modernizing middle class. Despite being categorised in this manner, Gracita Morales become an example of what Kathleen Rowe calls ‘unruly women’, female comics who by talking back and laughing loudly claim their right to a traditionally male privilege, thereby challenging the notion of comedy as a male-dominated genre.

This concluding chapter considers the status of women's sports in 2012, the various points of change that brought them there, and reasserts the need to cheer with reserve. Even as the number of women athletes seems to rise, their representation in administrative ranks has dwindled from the pre-Title IX era. In addition, sports sociologists Michael Messner and Cheryl Cooky found that there has been a “precipitous decline” in the amount of television coverage devoted to women's sports over the past several years. In 2009 women's sports garnered just 1.6 percent of network sports news and 1.4 percent of ESPN's SportsCenter. For a brief window in July 2012, however, those numbers temporarily increased as the world tuned in to the Women's Games.

This concluding chapter looks at the critical reception of Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009). Despite the efforts of some to dismiss the film as a prank, Antichrist is an astonishing film of rage and hopelessness, and its disturbing extremes speak of broad and deeply felt moral, social, and, ultimately, political anxieties. Compared with von Trier's previous films, Antichrist feels like a calculated provocation, begging audiences to question, both intellectually and viscerally, the limits of faith or ethics or whatever it is that makes one draw a line between good and evil. Still, how one sees, understands, and reacts to the film depends to a very large extent on what attitudes, beliefs, and prejudices one brings to it. Antichrist is essentially a film about misogyny. By revealing (via extreme exaggeration) the structure of patriarchal domination, the film critiques the tendency of mainstream films that represent women as needing to be disciplined by a rational male figure. In this respect, Antichrist has a considerable amount of feminist value to offer, and it should be explored as a complex net of sometimes contradictory meanings that expose the representation of the female gender within cinema and the fears connected to it.

Few female judges were appointed to the benches of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Special Court for Sierra Leone. Nevertheless, those appointments resulted in an active contribution of these women judges to the development of international criminal law, as is shown in the jurisprudence. Judges give judgement on the evidence, facts, and law before them, but women judges have been noted for advancing the existing law through broad interpretation. With the appointment of women investigators and prosecutors, more prosecutions for crimes of sexual violence followed. This is important as it progressively developed a field of law that had until then not, or only in a more limited manner, been adjudicated upon before international courts.