Rethinking Right Wing Women

Rethinking Right-Wing Women explores the institutional structures for and the representations, mobilisation, and the political careers of women in the British Conservative Party since the late 19th century. From the Primrose League (est.1883) to Women2Win (est.2005), the party has exploited women’s political commitment and their social power from the grass-roots to the heights of the establishment. Yet, although it is the party that extended the equal franchise, had the first woman MP to sit Parliament, and produced the first two women Prime Ministers, the UK Conservative Party has developed political roles for women that jar with feminist and progressive agendas. Conservative women have tended to be more concerned about the fulfilment of women’s duties than the realisation of women’s rights. This book tackles the ambivalences between women’s politicisation and women’s emancipation in the history of Britain’s most electorally successful and hegemonic political party.

In this enthralling narrative, Annelise Orleck chronicles the history of the American women's movement from the nineteenth century to the present. Starting with an incisive introduction that calls for a reconceptualization of American feminist history to encompass multiple streams of women's activism, she weaves the personal with the political, vividly evoking the events and people who participated in our era's most far-reaching social revolutions. In short, thematic chapters, Orleck enables readers to understand the impact of women's activism, and highlights how feminism has flourished through much of the past century within social movements that have too often been treated as completely separate. Showing that women’s activism has taken many forms, has intersected with issues of class and race, and has continued during periods of backlash, Rethinking American Women’s Activism is a perfect introduction to the subject for anyone interested in women’s history and social movements.

Feministische studie.

When we think of women's activism in America, liberal figures such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan invariably come to mind. But women's interests are not synonymous with organizations like NOW anymore. As Ronnee Schreiber shows, the conservative ascendancy that began in the Reagan era has been accompanied by the emergence of a broad-based conservative women's movement. Righting Feminism shows that one of the key--albeit overlooked--developments in political activism since the 1980s has been the emergence of conservative women's organizations. It focuses on Concerned Women for America and the Independent Women's Forum to reveal how they are using feminist rhetoric for conservative ends: outlawing abortion, restricting pornography, and bolstering the traditional family. But ironically, these organizations face a paradox: to combat the legacy of feminism--particularly its appeal to the majority of American women--they must use the rhetoric of women's empowerment. Indeed, Schreiber amply illustrates how conservative activists are often the beneficiaries of the very feminist politics they oppose. Yet just as importantly, she demolishes two widely believed truisms: that conservatism holds no appeal to women and that modern conservatism is hostile to the very notion of women's activism. And, in this updated edition, Schreiber takes the story forward with an epilogue that considers the ways in which the politics of representation have changed for both conservative women and feminist activists in the wake of the political ascendency of figures including Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Based on numerous interviews with colorful conservative activists and extensive analyses of organizational documents, Righting Feminism offers a new way of understanding the unlikely intersection of women's activism and conservative politics in America today.

Rethinking Domestic Violence is the third in a series of books by Donald Dutton critically reviewing research in the area of intimate partner violence (IPV). The research crosses disciplinary lines, including social and clinical psychology, sociology, psychiatry, affective neuropsychology, criminology, and criminal justice research. Since the area of IPV is so heavily politicized, Dutton tries to steer through conflicting claims by assessing the best research methodology. As a result, he comes to some very new conclusions. These conclusions include the finding that IPV is better predicted by psychological rather than social-structural factors, particularly in cultures where there is relative gender equality. Dutton argues that personality disorders in either gender account for better data on IPV. His findings also contradict earlier views among researchers and policy makers that IPV is essentially perpetrated by males in all societies. Numerous studies are reviewed in arriving at these conclusions, many of which employ new and superior methodologies than were available previously. After twenty years of viewing IPV as generated by gender and focusing on a punitive "law and order" approach, Dutton argues that this approach must be more varied and flexible. Treatment providers, criminal justice system personnel, lawyers, and researchers have indicated the need for a new view of the problem -- one less invested in gender politics and more open to collaborative views and interdisciplinary insights. Dutton’s rethinking of the fundamentals of IPV is essential reading for psychologists, policy makers, and those dealing with the sociology of social science, the relationship of psychology to law, and explanations of adverse behaviour.

This volume examines how the British Conservative Party has appealed to women, the roles that women have played in the party, and the tense relationship between women’s activism on the Right and feminism. Covering the period since the early 20th century, the contributions each question assumptions about the reactionary response of the British Right, Margaret Thatcher’s party, to women’s issues and to their political aspirations. How have women been mobilized by the Conservative Party? What kind of party appeals has the British Conservative Party designed to attract women as party workers and as voters? Developing successful strategies to attract women voters since 1918, and appealing to certain notional women’s issues, and having produced the only two women Prime Minters of the UK, the Conservative Party has its own special relationship with women in the modern period. The shifting status of women and opportunities for women in politics in modern Britain has been garnering more scholarly attention recently, and the centenary of women’s partial suffrage in 2018 and Astor 100 in 2019 has done much to excite wider attention and public interest in these debates. However, the role of Conservative women has too often been seen as problematic, especially because of general assumption that feminism is only allied to leftist movements and political positions. This volume explores these themes through a range of case studies, covering the period from the early 20th to the 21st century. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Women’s History Review.

Two decades of neoliberalism have destroyed a structured, pan-regional feminist movement in Canada. As a result, new generations of feminists have come to age without ever seeing the force that an organized social movement can have in democratic society. They have never benefited from the knowledge, the debates, the actions, the mass mobilizations or the leadership that all accompany a social movement and instead organize in decentralized silos. As a result, government and corporate leaders have co-opted feminism to turn it into something that can be bought, sold, or used to attract voters. Campaigns like #BeenRapedNeverReported, #MeToo, the SlutWalks and the Canadian Women’s marches, while important, don’t yet have the organized power to bring the changes that activists seek to make in society. In Take Back The Fight, Nora Loreto examines the state of modern feminism in Canada and argues that feminists must organize to take back feminism from politicians, business leaders and journalists who distort and obscure its power. Furthermore, Loreto urges today’s activists to overcome the challenges that sank the movement decades ago, to stop centering whiteness as the quintessential woman’s experience, and to find ways to rebuild the communities that have been obliterated by neoliberal economic policies.

With the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the early 2000s in Turkey, the headscarf that used be looked down upon by the secular middle and upper classes moved to the mainstream. It has since become a symbol of desirable womanhood. This development has pushed Turkey's secular feminists, who had been critical of the headscarf ban, to the margins. This book is the first to trace this new phase of conservative gender politics by examining the images of women's headscarves across secular and Islamic news media. Based on the analysis of photographs and the columns of conservative women journalists, the book sheds light on how the AKP is transforming the image of womanhood. It also identifies the rise of the conservative female journalist as an important phenomenon in the country. Esra Özcan problematizes designators such as “Islamist women” or “Islamic feminists” and instead aims to understand these women in terms of their commitment to right-wing activism and politics, which has so far been ignored. An original contribution to feminist scholarship on Muslim women, this book draws on the unique perspectives of Visual Culture and Communication Studies.