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Home → Research Centres → Jigs → Issues → Volume 7, Numbers 1 & 2 (double issue)

Volume 7, Numbers 1 & 2 (Double Issue)

2003

Contents

Articles

 

Poetry

No information about poetry published in this issue is available at this time.

 

Book Reviews

 

Abstracts

"I WISH TO BECOME THE LEADER OF WOMEN AND GIVE THEM EQUAL RIGHTS IN SOCIETY": DIVERSE REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER, JUSTICE AND FEMINISM AMONG YOUNG AUSTRALIANS AND ASIANS

CHILLA BULBECK, Department of Social Inquiry, University of Adelaide

Abstract

It is widely known that "feminism" is an "f… word" in Anglophone western countries, refused by many women and despised by many men. Some commentators argue that the word "feminism" has even less currency in Asian nations, where histories of colonialism cast feminism as an imperialist import from the west. My research findings, based on a study of young South Australians and young Asians living in Beijing, Hanoi, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Seoul and Yogyakarta, challenge this claim. In general, there is stronger support for feminism and the women's movement in most of the Asian samples. Various explanations for this are canvassed. First, where feminist reform has stalled in the Anglophone west, women's movements in countries like South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan are still achieving legislative change and the introduction of women's studies courses, although this is met with both support and resistance among young people. Secondly, there is widespread endorsement of "state feminisms" in countries like China, Viet Nam, and Indonesia, often built on historical connections between the women's movement and the national liberation movement. Third, in some countries, such as India at least until recently, the women's movement's role is constructed as the "upliftment" or "empowerment" of the poor and disadvantaged. Excused from being the objects of change, middle class Indians might find feminism less personally discomfiting that the "personal is political" rhetoric of western feminism.

 

HISTORICAL ROMANCE, GENDER AND HETEROSEXUALITY: JOHN FOWLES'S THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN AND A.S. BYATT'S POSSESSION

LISA FLETCHER, Department of English, University of Melbourne

Abstract

This essay is a comparative analysis of two historical romance novels: John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman and A. S. Byatt's Possession. While I acknowledge that some of the key storytelling priorities in Possession oppose those of The French Lieutenant's Woman, I emphasise structural similarities in the treatments of the heroines in these two novels. My analysis of the characterisation and narrative function of Sarah Woodruff and Christabel LaMotte illustrates the novels' common paradigmatic structure and reveals a deeper shared allegiance to heterosexual hegemony. I argue that these characters are crucial to the complex negotiation of the past which both novels offer. They enable, in Diane Elam's words, "a re-engendering of the historical past as romance". Sarah and Chrtistabel's representation as both historical and outside of history provides the conduit for the elaborate to-ing and fro-ing between the Victorian age and the late twentieth century which is central to both novels. The double aspect of these characters depends on allegorical stereotyping of women as "mystery" and "truth"

 

THE REGULATION OF GENDER: COSMETIC SURGERY, REGULATORY PROCESSES AND FEMININITY

SUZANNE FRASER, National Centre in HIV Social Research, University of New South Wales

Abstract

Regulatory discourse on silicone breast implant surgery in Australia largely takes its lead from that in the US. In doing so, it utilises a number of linguistic repertoires also found in US material. This paper takes up and adapts the work of Teresa de Lauretis to formulate breast implant discourse as a technology of gender, and uses this theoretical framework to examine two of these repertoires, that of "hysteria" and that of "junk science". It demonstrates the ways in which the repertoires help shape regulatory decisions about procedures and devices along gendered lines, and at the same time, it draws out the implications of some of the options these repertoires make available to individuals for constructing gendered selves.

 

MASCULINITY, FEMININITY AND THE MILITARY

KIM HOSKING, School of Social Sciences, Australian National University

Abstract

This paper endeavours to historically situate the increasing participation of women in western militaries in the twentieth century. The paper begins with a brief historical analysis of the military as it has evolved as social institution over the last four centuries, illustrating how the formation of states and the rationalisation of violence combined to consolidate male dominance in the organisation and conduct of war. In doing so, it attempts to outline how this development has intersected with dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity. The paper then narrows the focus to developments in the twentieth century, specifically the increasing participation of women in core military activities, and argues that current debates about women in the armed forces, particularly in combat roles, can only be understood in light of these historical developments.

 

BOYS INVESTMENTS IN FOOTBALL CULTURE: CHALLENGING GENDERED AND HOMOPHOBIC UNDERSTANDINGS

AMANDA KEDDIE, Faculty of Education, The University of Southern Queensland

Abstract

This paper describes elements of a study concerning the peer group understandings of five male friends between the ages of six and eight years. In drawing parallels to related work, the paper supports the findings of previous research which links boys' investments in football culture to their legitimation and perpetuation of gendered and homophobic understandings of masculinity. Through a feminist post-structural theorising of masculinities as multi-faceted, fluid and tenuous and thus amenable to change, the paper discusses how boys' gendered and homophobic understandings might be interrupted and reworked within the sphere of early primary education. Within a framework of social justice, underpinned by anti-sexist and anti-homophobic principles, ways through which schools can facilitate the development of more affirmative but equally legitimate understandings and embodiments are explored.

 

PLATO, FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY AND THE (RE)PRESENTATION OF CULTURE: BUTLER, IRIGARAY, AND THE EMBODIED SUBJECTIVITY OF ANCIENT WOMEN

PETER KEEGAN, Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University

Abstract

This paper seeks first to interrogate the ways in which two contemporary feminist thinkers (Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray) have appropriated and reformulated a fundamental principle of pre-modern thinking about human action and conduct (Plato's philosophy of Forms). I will argue that any view on issues of essentialist and constructivist social history which Butler and Irigaray inadvertently raise must first accommodate a thoroughgoing presentation of all available evidence. The second half of this paper explores the ways in which specific representations of female identity ? the gravestone of two citizens of the late-republican city of Rome (CIL 6/3.18524) and the graffito of a Roman "poetess" in the epigraphic environment of early-imperial Pompeii (CIL 4.5296) ? engender (in many senses) exactly the kinds of tensions and ambiguities which Butler and Irigaray bring to bear on Plato's philosophical strategies. What I hope to illustrate is two-fold: a practical method of, and the critical need for, integrating post-modern theoretical standpoints on sex/gender issues with the representational discourses of the ancient world.

 

ECOFEMINISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: WOMEN'S RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

TERRY LEAHY, School of Social Sciences, University of Newcastle

Abstract

Ecofeminism proposes an alliance between feminism and the environmentalist movement. Both essentialist and constructionist versions suggest that women are potential supporters of environmental politics. Survey data gives modest support for this hypothesis. Qualitative studies have emphasized the situated character of women's environmentalist action. This qualitative study examines in-depth interviews with Australian women. Issues of social class, orientation to capitalism and aspects of dominant gender politics create a situation in which most women interviewed for this study actively reject strong environmental politics. On the other hand some affinity with the viewpoint of ecofeminism is a theme in these interviews, both for those who are environmentalists and those who generally oppose environmentalism.

 

"NOW WE CAN DIE LIKE MEN": AN EXAMINATION OF WOMEN AND WAR IN ERITREA

CHRISTINE MASON, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland

Abstract

War is integral to shared national narratives of suffering as well as victory and liberation. In this article I examine the (re)creation of the Eritrean state and the internal gender differentiation that occurs within this context. Eritrea is significant since women comprised such a large proportion of the combat fighters in the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) during the first struggle against Ethiopia. In the second border conflict with Ethiopia from 1997-2000 women continued to remain pivotal to the compulsory national military service program (NSP). This article, therefore examines why women joined the Eritrean People's Liberation Front during the thirty year war and why women subsequently participated in the post-liberation NSP programme and the Ethio-Eritrean border conflict. This debate therefore draws out another issue as well: how and why Eritrean women have avoided these war zones during conflict.

 

CLASS AND GENDER IN NEW SOUTH WALES ELECTORAL POLITICS, 1930-32

GEOFF ROBINSON, School of Historical Studies, Monash University

Abstract

Historians have neglected the impact of female enfranchisement of Australian electoral outcomes. This papers employs multivariate analysis to explore electoral behaviour in New South Wales during the Great Depression. It argues that women were less prone to support Labor than men, but that women in paid employment constituted a partial exception to this pattern. In 1932 the conservative parties significantly eroded Labor's working-class support. Part of this success was due to the ability of employers to coerce workers with the threat of dismissal. Female wage earners were particularly vulnerable to this coercion. Conservative electoral appeals recast masculinity in terms of family responsibility rather than class assertion. Conflict in the household economy possibly influenced women to vote against Labor due to its identification with the cause of male breadwinners. Overall female voting behaviour was more stable than that of men and this despite the high profile of issues that would have been expected particularly to influence female voters.

 

MASCULINE SCRIPTING AND THE MTHYOLOGY OF MOTORCYCLING

MATTHEW ROFE & HILARY P.M. WINCHESTER, Department of Geography, University of Newcastle

Abstract

Participant observation and interviews with bikers on the Old Road north of Sydney demonstrate that the performance of a motorcycling identity is related to naturalised discourses of masculinity. The mythological scripting of motorcycling masculinity is reinforced through the motorcycling media and the socialisation and initiation of young riders. The myths that are enacted are essentially myths of mastery, predominantly over self and machine, but by extension over nature, women and homosexual masculinities. We argue that the non-conforming behaviour of motorcyclists reflects not class-based alienation and resistance to authority but the performance of motorcycling mythologies based on aggressive masculinity.