Resistance in the New Harem Era: Gendered Violence and the Power of Media in the Time of Covid-19 in Morocco

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-41
Author(s):  
Sara El Ouedrhiri ◽  
Hafsa El Mesbahi
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Movement Restriction ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Fatima Mernissi ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

In a time of great uncertainties, the world witnesses, for the very first instance in its modern history a global lockdown spanning over all the vital spheres of economic and social life. At this point, when neither leaving home nor staying is an option, the surge to exponentially study the manner in which human life has evolved and been shaped under such circumstances gained valuable interest, especially within the circles of feminist and human rights-based academia. Respectively, researchers argue that the weight of the lockdown and movement restriction policies fall discriminately on men and women as they are interestingly leading such novel experiences in different ways. Men, by having no concern mounting to the priority of protecting themselves from being inflicted by this global pandemic and maintaining their economic roles as the traditional family providers, and women on the margin side of the picture, having to deal with the burden of surviving the dangers that the outside and the inside worlds akin dispose. Henceforth, this article is an attempt to probe the dynamics of the private sphere considering the intersections between oppression, seclusion and violence and the development of new dynamics of resistance by transposing from the early 20th century’s feminine experience of confinement and the 21st century’s global lockdown in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. This research considers the stories presented by the renowned Moroccan sociologist and author “Fatima Mernissi”, who herself lived a different kind of seclusion behind the colossal and skillfully ostentatious walls of the harem of the city of Fez in the forties of the previous century and this shall be done mainly by reviewing the stories of resistance presented in her memoir Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood; and by considering the stories of five respondents who have shared with us their accounts through various social media outlets upon the surge of the pandemic in Morocco. The purpose here is to unravel the convergences between women’s experiences of gender-based violence (GBV) in both confinements and to foreground the value, significance and challenges these feminine insights being in them simple acts of everyday life constitute in establishing a discourse of resistance and feminine empowerment vis-à-vis patriarchy, seclusion and gender-based violence.

scholarly journals Gender Inequalities and the Effects of Feminine Artworks on Public Spaces: A Dialogue

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 158-167
Author(s):  
Hooshmand Alizadeh ◽  
Josef Kohlbacher ◽  
Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin ◽  
Tabin Latif Raouf
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Social Barriers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Kurdish Women ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

Feminist street art aims to transform patriarchal spaces into places of gendered resistance by asserting a feminist presence in the city. Considering this, as well as women’s social life, their struggle against lingering forces of patriarchy, and relating features of inequality (domestic violence), there was a feminist installation artwork by the young Kurdish artist Tara Abdulla that shook the city of Sulaimani in Iraqi Kurdistan on 26 October 2020. She had prepared a 4,800‐meter‐long washing line covered with the clothes of 99,678 Kurdish women who were survivors of sexual and gender‐based violence. They installed it along the busiest street of the city (Salim Street). She used this piece of feminine to express her reaction to the Kurdish society regarding, the abuse that goes on silently, behind closed doors. She also aimed towards normalizing women’s bodies. After the installation, she received many controversial reactions. As her artwork was a pioneering project in line with feminist issues in Kurdistan which preoccupied the city for quite a while, the aim of this article is to investigate the diverse effects of her work on the current dialogue regarding gender inequality in the Kurdish society. To do this, we used the research method of content analysis on big data (Facebook comments) to investigate the public reactions of a larger number of locals. The Feminine effectively exposed some of the deep‐rooted cultural, religious, and social barriers in addressing gender inequalities and silent sexual violence issues in the modern Kurdish patriarchal society.

scholarly journals Flânerie in Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-18
Author(s):  
Magdalena Pfalzgraf
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City

Valerie Tagwira’s debut novel The Uncertainty of Hope, set in Harare in 2005, depicts the city on the brink of collapse, characterized by the effects of economic crisis and political violence against the urban poor. Political marginalization of the working classes and gender-based violence intersect and diminish the prospects for the social and spatial mobility of the urban poor. In this article I apply the lens of flânerie to the pedestrian movements of Tagwira’s protagonist Onai Moyo, an impoverished woman who makes a living by selling vegetables on Harare’s streets. In order to make a case for Onai’s ‘flânerie against all odds’, I revisit Walter Benjamin’s theorization as well as recent scholarly engagements with flânerie in non-European settings. By giving her protagonist a gaze traditionally associated with a European middle-class urbanity of the 19th century, Tagwira expands a tradition of city writing/walking and, like other contemporary engagements with flânerie, also breathes new life into a concept often pronounced inappropriate or unproductive for readings of non-European literature. 

Gendered Violence in Israeli Detention

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Sahar Francis
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Female Prisoners ◽  
Palestinian Women ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Israeli Occupation

Women have been instrumental to the Palestinian liberation struggle from its inception, and the role they have played in political, civil, and armed resistance has been as critical, if not as visible, as that of their male counterparts. In addition to experiencing the same forms of repression as men, be it arrest, indefinite detention, or incarceration, Palestinian women have also been subjected to sexual violence and other gendered forms of coercion at the hands of the Israeli occupation regime. Drawing on testimonies from former and current female prisoners, this paper details Israel's incarceration policies and examines their consequences for Palestinian women and their families. It argues that Israel uses the incarceration of women as a weapon to undermine Palestinian resistance and to fracture traditionally cohesive social relations; and more specifically, that the prison authorities subject female prisoners to sexual and gender-based violence as a psychological weapon to break them and, by extension, their children.

Everyday genocide: femicide, transicide and the responsibility to protect

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Standish
Keyword(s):  
Physical Violence ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Psychological Violence ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to establish a conceptual connection between gender-based violence (GBV) and genocide. Victims of gendercide, such as femicide and transicide, should be eligible for protections assigned to victims of genocide, including the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Design/methodology/approach This study examines genocide, gendercide, femicide, transicide and the R2P doctrine to formulate a platform of engagement from which to argue the alignment and congruence of genocide with gendercide. Using a content analysis of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees definition of GBV, and Article II of the Genocide Convention (GC) five “directive” facets are examined, namely, identity, physical violence, psychological violence, oppressive violence and repressive violence. Findings Expressions of physical violence, psychological violence, oppressive violence and repressive violence reflected similarity, whereas the GCs omit sex and gender as facets of identity group inclusion. The only variation is the encapsulation of identity factors included in the acts of harm. Practical implications The elevation of gendercide to the status of genocide would permit us the leverage to make it not only illegal to permit gendercide – internationally or in-country – but make it illegal not to intervene, too. Social implications Deliberate harm based on sex and gender are crimes against people because of their real or perceived group membership, and as such, should be included in genocide theory and prevention. Originality/value This study explores a new conceptual basis for addressing gendercidal violence nationally to include sex and gender victim groups typically excluded from formal parameters of inclusion and address due to limitations in Article II. The analysis of genocide alongside GBV may inform scholars and activists in the aim to end gendered violence.

Defiant Spirituality

2019 ◽  
pp. 193-222
Author(s):  
Traci C. West
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
South African ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Black Lesbian ◽  
Movement Building ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

As interactions with South African activist leaders and social movement building strategies are examined, the chapter probes ideas about activist solidarity in opposing the targeting of lesbians for assault and murder. It conceptualizes the use defiant Africana spirituality as a resource in spontaneous street responses, grieving rituals, public witness, and other organizational practices in both South African and United States examples. To differing degrees, Christian, African Traditional Religious, and non-religious spiritual understandings inform solidarity building that combines antiracist commitments and/or interfaith religious cooperation to end homophobic gender-based violence. The argument focuses on communally generated defiant spirituality that accentuates human life-enhancing potential when confronting opponents of human thriving and freedom from violence and the threat of it for black lesbian and gender non-conforming community members.

Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy and “Gender Cosmopolitanism”

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-235
Author(s):  
Annika Bergman Rosamond
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Other Regarding

Abstract Gender justice and equality have risen to prominence in the constitution of foreign and security policy. This article locates the analysis of feminist foreign policy (FFP) within the wider context of Sweden's state feminist tradition as well as its pursuit of “gender cosmopolitanism” in global politics. Both “gender cosmopolitanism” and Sweden's state feminist tradition provided fertile ground for the formal adoption of FFP in 2014. The article employs poststructural discursive techniques that enable the identification of the statist feminist and cosmopolitan foundations of feminist foreign policy. More specifically, the article provides a discursive analysis of the ethical and feminist ambitions, normative contents, and pitfalls of FFP. Though FFP is grounded in other-regarding cosmopolitan care for vulnerable women and girls beyond borders, it exhibits a range of pitfalls and inconsistencies, such as equating gender with women and, at times, privileging results-oriented strategies over thoroughgoing gender analysis of structural injustices such as gendered violence. The article ends with a discussion of Sweden's attempts to translate the feminist and cosmopolitan contents of FFP commitments into policy practice, with a focus on the eradication of gender-based violence.

scholarly journals Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Ordinary People; A Social Distancing Challenge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fahim Aslam
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Technological Adaptation ◽  
The Common ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

COVID-19 has become a part of everyone's day-to-day life, since the outbreak in 2019 the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused more than 4.5 million deaths with over 200 million cases reported globally. Currently, the number of infections and deaths are gradually lowering in different countries however the underlying challenges still exist. COVID-19 threatens human life, social functioning and development. Although numerous studies have been carried out in the past to highlight the key challenges very limited studies have been conducted from an ordinary person's viewpoint. In the fight against COVID-19, humanity has been pushed to a level which cannot be accepted where establishing that balance is a priority. This study focuses on highlighting the common issues faced by the ordinary public in the current era. Five key areas were identified to be the most essential; education, technological adaptation, transportation, mental health and gender-based violence (GBV).

Photos from the Quarter

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-112
Keyword(s):  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Israeli Occupation

This sample of photos from 16 August–15 November 2019 aims to convey a sense of Palestinian life during this quarter. The images capture Palestinians across the diaspora as they fight to exercise their rights: to run for office, to vote, and to protest both Israeli occupation and gender-based violence.

THE SINS OF THE FATHER: GENDER- BASED VIOLENCE IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Snodgrass
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Women ◽  
South African ◽  
African Women ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
South African Women

This article explores the complexities of gender-based violence in post-apartheid South Africa and interrogates the socio-political issues at the intersection of class, ‘race’ and gender, which impact South African women. Gender equality is up against a powerful enemy in societies with strong patriarchal traditions such as South Africa, where women of all ‘races’ and cultures have been oppressed, exploited and kept in positions of subservience for generations. In South Africa, where sexism and racism intersect, black women as a group have suffered the major brunt of this discrimination and are at the receiving end of extreme violence. South Africa’s gender-based violence is fuelled historically by the ideologies of apartheid (racism) and patriarchy (sexism), which are symbiotically premised on systemic humiliation that devalues and debases whole groups of people and renders them inferior. It is further argued that the current neo-patriarchal backlash in South Africa foments and sustains the subjugation of women and casts them as both victims and perpetuators of pervasive patriarchal values.

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