In response to the phenomenon of women converting to Islam, a body of research has emerged, engaging with the question, ‘Why are Western women, raised in liberal contexts, converting to Islam?’ This line of enquiry is not limited to academic literature. In recent years, converts to Islam have faced intense scrutiny in mainstream media across Europe. This article contributes an analysis of documentaries to the study of representations of female converts to Islam, focusing particularly on the British documentary Make (...) Me a Muslim and the Swiss documentary Les Converties d’Allah. We suggest that comparing these two documentaries illuminates certain common narrative threads in media representations of female converts to Islam across different European contexts. In this article, we firstly situate this research within existing literature on gender and conversion to Islam and outline our approach to the study of documentaries on women’s conversion to Islam. Secondly, we analyse the two documentaries, focusing on their shared concerns, namely gender equality and women’s oppression, and the familial environment of the female convert. We argue that paying attention to how female converts are represented illuminates some of the ways in which European framings of the ‘in-betweenness’ of female converts to Islam create notions of female converts as ‘vulnerable-fanatics’ prone to ‘radicalisation’, and threatened by ‘oppressive’ Islam. We demonstrate how female converts participating in documentaries at times complicate and talk back to apprehensions regarding equality, oppression and radicalisation. Finally, we focus in a similar way on understandings of female converts as ‘troublemakers’ within their family environments. Throughout the analysis, we show how the figure of the female convert as vulnerable-fanatic and as family troublemaker is gendered and interlaced with concerns about essentialised cultural difference and radicalisation. (shrink)

The present paper, adopting some of the tools offered by Cognitive Linguistics, namely the mechanisms of conceptual metaphor and metonymy, is a qualitative study of a sociolinguistic nature. Its overall purpose is an attempt at exhibiting a paradigm shift in the representation of women in Anglo-American proverbs. Combining the potential of the cross-fertilisation between Cognitive Linguistics and paremiological studies, the study appertains to the sense-threads embedded in the figurative language of proverbs, with the main focus on a cognitive semantic (...) analysis of selected Anglo-American paremias directed towards women and animals. The main goal of the research is the juxtaposition of the meaning coded in two proverbs of traditional status, as representatives of a larger group of paremiological units (i.e. A woman, a cat, and a chimney should never leave the house; A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to no good end), reflecting the deep-rooted gender-biased ideology in patriarchal Anglo-American society, with the content of the selected anti-proverb (i.e. The early bird gets up to serve his wife breakfast in bed) and a contemporary proverb (i.e. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle), serving as sample evidence of the heralds of a paradigm shift in the issue of gender stereotyping stored in paremiological wisdom. The paper shows that the motivation behind the use of the analysed proverbs is to be accounted for by reference to the mechanism of metaphor-metonymy interaction, while the rise of new gender-related proverbs can be regarded as a sign of socio-cultural changes. Specifically, through the medium of modern paremiology, asymmetrical representation of male and female gender, coupled with traditional masculine and feminine characteristics as well as social roles, appears if not endangered then, at least, to be taking a promising path. (shrink)

Purpose. Based on actualization of gender discursive features, the current piece aims to clarify and accentuate the manifestation of gender-philosophical ideas interaction: feminism in the framework of objectivism. The source material for the current article is a novel by Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged", which is a philosophical work on objectivism. Theoretical basis. The development of the gender discourse, in particular the discourse of feminism is researched from the retrospective angle. This piece is an attempt to underline peculiarities of female (...) artistic images representation in Rand’s work and the way Rand’s novel influenced the logical development of feminist discourse. Discourse of feminism is a rather peculiar notion for Objectivism, where the notion of gender is, theoretically, annihilated as far as gender is irrelevant for both personal and professional growth, however, practically, gender representation and actualization is ubiquitous in Rand’s philosophy. Originality. The distinctive features of gender discourse in Objectivism are highlighted in this piece; the results are based on the application of comparative analysis. It is argued that philosophy itself may well be perceived through a literary work of fiction, thus making artistic images prototypes of philosophy functionaries. Conclusion. "Atlas Shrugged" is not merely a literary fiction, but rather a philosophical treatise on Objectivism, which is a philosophy of individual struggle and achievement. The main female protagonist of "Atlas Shrugged", Dagny Taggart, is a staunch supporter of Objectivism. In Rand’s opinion Dagny Taggart is a prototype of a true woman of utopian American capitalist society, and it is her artistic image that was misinterpreted by supporters of feminist movement ideas and Dagny Taggart became an icon of feminism, whereas in reality Dagny’s discourse is rather a discourse of femininity, for Dagny despises everything that is connected with feminist ideas and practices, and, it is an error to weave her discourse into a much wider feminist discourse. (shrink)

In Storybrooke, the city in which Once Upon a Time takes place, live many characters of fantastic stories. A plethora of princesses resides in this town, and their history, like their representation, undergoes important variations. Moving away from the role of “damsel in distress” often found in fairy tales and their adaptations, Emma, Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood, gain independence and freedom. However, clichés are tough and heroines often get involved in stereotypical love stories, where motherhood seems (...) to be the only possible destiny. Between literary revivals and mutations, we are now going to study these female figures and their evolution through two forms: the tale and the series. (shrink)

This article focuses on the representation of female physical illness and disability in the works of two Arab women writers: Iraqi Alia Mamdouh’s Habbat al Naftalin [Mothballs] (1986) and Egyptian Salwa Bakr’s al ‘Arabah al Dhahabiyah la Tas‘ad ila al Sama’ [The Golden Chariot] (1991). It argues that the representation of female illness in these works centres upon the figure of the sick mother. Despite the limitations of this trope of illness, both novels offer a more (...) complex illness narrative than those of their Arab predecessors. By problematizing the representation of the sick woman/mother, both novels challenge the traditional role of the silent, sick female figure whose story remains outside the limits of representation. Finally, the article argues that this textual recuperation of the female suffering body is achieved through the employment of a mother— daughter plot which continues to represent the sick mother as socially and emotionally absent but which nevertheless renders her a central figure in the daughter’s narrative. (shrink)

This research investigates the representations of gendered social actors within the subversionary discourse of equal educational opportunities for males and females in Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) books. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the theoretical framework, the authors blend van Leeuwen’s (Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis, Routledge, London, 2003) ‘Social Actor Network Model’ and Sunderland’s (Gendered discourses, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, 2004) ‘Gendered Discourses Model’ in order to examine the depictions of male and female (...) social actors within this gendered discourse. The gendered discourse of equal opportunities was buttressed by such representations within a tight perspective in proportion to gender ideologies prevailing in Iran. Resorting to CDA, we can claim that resistance against such gendered discourse in Iranian EFL textbooks militates against such gender norms. These representations of male and female social actors in school books are indicative of an all-encompassing education, reinforcing that the discourse of equal opportunities is yet to be realized in the education system of Iran. (shrink)

Christ figures and holy fools are familiar religious symbols often repeated and adapted in film making. They have historically most often been depicted as male, and among the slowly growing body of female filmic christ figures, they are usually depicted as adult White women. In this article, I consider two films, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider and Disney’s Moana, in which young Indigenous girls are depicted within this trope. I engage in close reading of the films, in relation (...) to Anton Karl Kozlovic’s theoretical framework for structural characteristics of the filmic christ figure, as I focus my discussion here on the christological symbolism of the two female child figures in these films, while also folding this back to the long-standing religious and literary tradition of the holy fool. The aim of this article is to contribute to the growing body of critical and theoretical work about the representation and reading of women and religion in film. (shrink)

Within Prudentius’Peristephanonthere are three main episodes which focus upon the torture and/or death of women: the torture and death of Eulalia inPerist. 3, that of Encratis inPerist. 4 and the death of Agnes inPerist. 14. This article compares the variety and types of pain that these women are depicted as undergoing during their martyrdoms, analysing the extent to which gender and sexuality play a role in their responses to pain or to the threat of it. The article first examines the (...) martyrdoms of Agnes and Eulalia and uses these as a basis for analysing the torture of Encratis who is depicted as suffering the most pain and who, even more than the other two, is represented as a liminal figure, not only in terms of gender but also in terms of her status as a living being. A comparison and contrast between Prudentius’ representation of Encratis and his depiction of Loth's wife in hisHamartigeniawill give further insight into the significance of Encratis’ suffering and the way in which the slow and painful decay of her flesh links her with the city she protects. It will be shown how the vulnerability of these martyrs’ female flesh and the threatened or actualized violation of their virginal bodies are rendered at once shocking and their source of triumph over traumatic pain. (shrink)

This study examines the representation of male and female musicians in world-class symphony orchestras. Personnel of 40 orchestras of three regions, UK, Europe and the USA and distributions of men and women across the four orchestral departments: strings, woodwind, brass and percussion are compared. Significant differences in representation between orchestras of the three regions are reported. Practices adopted by orchestras when appointing musicians to vacant positions are reviewed and numbers of males and females appointed to rank-and-file and (...) Section Principals are compared. Career patterns of male and female musicians are also compared. Increases in numbers of women appointed to orchestral posts in the last three decades are compared with increases in the proportion of women in the general workforce. The data of orchestral membership are then compared with the numbers of young people receiving tuition on orchestral instruments retrieved from a large national database (n = 391,000 students). Implications for the future of male and female representation in orchestral personnel are then considered. (shrink)

"Cult of ugliness," Ezra Pound’s phrase, powerfully summarizes the ways in which modernists such as Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and T. E. Hulme—the self-styled "Men of 1914"—responded to the "horrid or sordid or disgusting" conditions of modernity by radically changing aesthetic theory and literary practice. Only the representation of "ugliness," they protested, would produce the new, truly "beautiful" work of art. They dissociated the beautiful from its traditional embodiment in female beauty, and from its association with (...) Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. Their cultivation of ugliness displaced misogyny and homophobia. Higgins takes in texts such as John Ruskin’s art criticism, Eliot’s literary journalism, Lewis’s pro-fascism pamphlets, and the poetry of Pound, Conrad Aiken, and Langston Hughes. She demonstrates that even vigorous champions of beauty were committed to aesthetic practices that disempowered female figures in order to articulate new truths of male artistic mastery. (shrink)

What one decides fit for appearance through writing and speech bears a political signifi cance that risk being distorted through both language, reception in the public, and through calls for gendered representations. How can work of female philosophers be interpreted as a concern for the world from that of having to respond to a male-dominated discourse through which speech becomes trapped into what one might represent as ‘other’? In this paper, I explore the public reception of two female (...) thinkers who question, in diff erent ways, the dominant notion of the author or philosopher as a male subject; what kind of limitations does the relative notion of ‘female’ pose political action, and how can privilege constitute a hindrance to feminist solidarity? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guibert of Tournai's Letter to Lady Isabelle:An Introduction and English TranslationLarry F. Field, Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Guibert of TournaiIntroductionGuibert, from the noble family of As-Piès, was born near Tournai around 1200. From his hometown he traveled to Paris for his art degree, and completed the curriculum in theology there before entering the Franciscan Order around 1240. He may have participated in Louis IX's crusade of 1248, (...) but, if so, was surely back in Paris by 1254 at the latest, since he preached a cycle of sermons de dominicis et de sanctis to the university community before summer 1255.1 His regency as Franciscan master of theology at Paris was probably around 1259–1261,2 about the time he [End Page 31] completed his Eruditio regum et principum for Louis IX,3 and began his most substantial work, the Erudimentum doctrinae.4 Other significant treatises include his De pace et animi tranquillitate (ca. 1275)5 written for Marie de Dampierre, and the Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae, prepared for the Second Council of Lyon.6 Guibert died in Tournai on 7 October 1284.7Sometime around 1254, Guibert wrote a long letter of spiritual advice to Isabelle (1225–70), the sister of King Louis IX.8 Isabelle was herself a remarkable figure. She had rejected several proposals of marriage, including that with Conrad, the heir to Emperor Frederick II, in 1243, in spite of pressure from her family and Pope Innocent IV. But following a bout of serious illness at about that time,9 her family accepted her [End Page 32] decision to remain unwed. There is no evidence, however, that Isabelle ever pronounced a formal vow of virginity. Through the 1250s she simply remained at the Capetian court as a virgin princess with an increasing reputation for piety and indeed holiness, praised in lavish terms by Innocent IV in 1253 and Alexander IV in 1256.10 This piety took a distinctly Franciscan turn by 1254, when Pope Innocent IV granted her request for Franciscan confessors,11 which would ultimately result in her foundation of Longchamp, a house of Sorores minores just west of Paris, by 1260.12 Guibert's letter shows no awareness of such a project, indicating that it must have been written before spring 1255, by which time the land for Longchamp was being purchased on Isabelle's behalf.13 Guibert thus wrote at the moment when Isabelle was forming her first ties to the Franciscans, but well before her move to Longchamp, where she lived out the 1260s as resident lay patron (but never a nun).Guibert's Letter is really a short treatise of spiritual and moral advice, tailored to a celibate princess. It is organized around Psalm 44:14–15, All the glory of the king's daughter is within in golden fringes, clothed around with varieties. In a five-part structure, the king's daughter stands for a heavenly inheritance; glory within represents internal purity; gold indicates virginity; the fringes are a sign of humility; and clothed around with varieties points to honest comportment. The resulting "royal garment," however, is rather unequally woven together, with section one on the "heavenly inheritance" and the intertwined sections three and four on virginity and humility receiving by far the most space. In fact, section one forms a sort of treatise-within-a-treatise, organized as a ten-step ascent to the heavenly inheritance awaiting the daughter of the king. [End Page 33]The Letter to Lady Isabelle was first edited by Alphonse de Poorter in 1931, from a manuscript which contained only part of the text.14 The full text was brought into print by Sean Field in 2003,15 and translated into French by Jacques Dalarun in 2014.16 Yet in spite of these advances, the Letter has remained little noticed by scholars. Anne-Hélène Allirot offered several perceptive pages in 2010, stressing the way Guibert's treatment of hereditas implies that female members of the royal family might be particularly able to embody Capetian claims to holiness.17 That same year, in the only recent article dedicated specifically to this Letter, Rina Lahav... (shrink)

This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts--mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides--in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category (...) on which the whole edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking. Cavarero develops a philosophical narrative which, by re-interpreting each of the four figures of ancient thought, uncovers several images of the female desire for self-representation. Plato himself had not forseen that one day female subjectivity would assert its autonomy, plundering and throwing into confusion the patriarchal text in order to tell another story. (shrink)

While scholarly research on the relationship between female board representation and strategic decision-making has gained momentum, employee policy outcomes have remained relatively understudied. Integrating theory from the ethics of care perspective with research on the glass ceiling and workplace voice, we seek to understand the circumstances under which female directors influence policy changes for firm employees. We argue that firms with increasing female board representation are more likely to enact human capital development policies benefiting firm (...) employees. However, this positive relationship will ultimately diminish as boards accrue an increasing number of female directors. We further predict that the presence of a female leader at the firm (serving in the role of either the CEO or the board chair) will moderate this diminishing effect. Using a sample of S&P 1500 firms, we find support for our hypotheses. The findings from this study provide evidence that while female board representation is positively related to human capital development policies, this effect is nuanced and impacted by the presence of female leadership at the top of organizations. Our paper extends existing research on the nature of female directors’ influence on ethical decisions, emphasizing the impact of these directors on employees. (shrink)

The contentious topic of female circumcision brings together medical science, women’s health activism, media, and national and international policy-making in pursuit of the common goal of eradicating such practices. Referring to these diverse and heterogeneous practices as ‘female genital mutilation’ (FGM), eradicators have then condemned them as ‘barbaric’ and medically harmful to female bodies and sexuality. In presuming that bodies can be separated from their cultural contexts, the anti-FGM discourse not only replicates a nature/culture dualism that has (...) been roundly questioned by feminists in science studies and cultural studies, but has also perpetuated a colonialist assumption by universalizing a particular western image of a ‘normal’ body and sexuality in its quest to liberate women and girls. I use my own story as a circumcised woman to highlight the entanglements of body and culture as presented in these feminist theories of female bodies. (shrink)

This paper outlines some key issues that arise when agency and temporality are considered jointly, from the perspective of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, phenomenology, and action theory. I address the difference between time simpliciter and time as represented as it figures in phenomena like intentional binding, goal-oriented action plans, emulation systems, and ‘temporal agency’. An examination of Husserl’s account of time consciousness highlights difficulties in generalizing his account to include a substantive notion of agency, a weakness inherited by explanatory projects (...) like neurophenomenology. I conclude by sketching a project analogous to the projects in neurophenomenology, based on Thompson’s naïve action theory. (shrink)

Research on women's political representation in postsocialist Europe has highlighted the role of cultural and political factors in obstructing women's access to legislative power, such as the prevalence of traditional gender stereotypes, electoral systems, and the absence of a feminist movement. Yet, the role of women political elites in enhancing or hindering women's access to political power in the region has so far remained uncharted. This article seeks to fill some of the existing gaps in this literature by examining (...) the views of women politicians with regard to women's political underrepresentation and their assessments of strategies for redressing this imbalance. Findings from the analysis reveal that although women politicians recognize gender inequalities in representation as a problem requiring intervention, how the problem is perceived, and the preferred measures to deal with it, is largely shaped by the social and cultural context in which these actors are embedded. (shrink)

La première loi envisageant de mobiliser les femmes en cas de guerre est mise en application en 1939 en France et des femmes s’engagent pour la première fois dans l’Armée française au début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. De 1939 à 1962, la France est en guerre sans discontinuer et les effectifs militaires féminins ne cessent d’augmenter. Cette présence féminine dans un bastion masculin, par excellence, engendre de nombreux débats et questionnements. Ces femmes doivent affronter de lourdes critiques et briser (...) les préjugés dont elles sont l’objet. Peinant à être reconnues comme militaires à part entière, les pionnières de la féminisation de l’Armée intriguent. Les médecins, les politiques mais aussi la presse et la société portent sur elles un regard très contrasté. Générant mythes et fantasmes, leur identité féminine et sexuelle est souvent remise en question. (shrink)

This paper explores the kinds of representations of the woman leader produced discursively in the Finnish business media. The paper draws on the idea that jobs and organizations are gendered and, to the extent that gendered features are valued differently, with masculinity being favoured particularly in managerial positions, the status of women and men leaders becomes unequal. Based on the assumption that the media form a powerful force which creates and maintains meanings in contemporary society, we focus on articles published (...) in a leading business newspaper and major business magazines in Finland. Three discourses are built based on the texts, namely a patriarchal, a victim and a professional discourse. The results of the study imply that the texts are largely reified in terms of masculinity, and that one underlying problem is the shortage of female role models and lack of the feminine perspective in the dominant discourse. It is suggested that, if we are to develop alternative, “new” ways of constructing the woman leader into being, the writing in the business media texts should opt to test the limits of the current discourses by voicing comments regarded as expressly feminine, instead of taking the masculine as the dominant norm. (shrink)

The inaccessibility of the Ottoman harems to European males helped perpetuate the image of the harem as purely sexual in nature and contributed to imperialistic discourse that positioned the East as inferior to the West. It was only with the emergence of female travellers and artists that Europe was afforded a brief glimpse into the source of their fantasies; however, whether these accounts catered to or challenged the normative imperialist discourse of the day remains controversial. Emerging scholarship also highlights (...) the way in which harem women themselves were able to control the depiction of their private spaces to suit their own needs, serving to highlight how nineteenth century depictions of the harem were a series of cross-cultural exchanges and negotiations between male Orientalists, female European travellers, and shrewd Ottoman women. (shrink)

The earliest Chinese handscroll extant painting is the ‘Nushi zhen’ by Gu Kaizhi housed in the British Museum, which is now often considered to be a Tang Dynasty copy of the original. This article shows the study of the representation of garment and accessories of the figure illustrations all-sided in the painting. And by comparing with correlated literature and images, it opens out the typical skills and style in which the ancient Chinese figure painters of Jin Dynasty (AD 265-420) (...) depicting the apparels in the handscroll painting. (shrink)

Immigration changed the ethnic composition of Western European societies. The new populations brought a series of culturally determined practices that challenged the liberal framework of values of the receiving states. Despite the existence of important variations between the official discourses and the actual policies finally implemented, the responses to those challenges varied with the models of integration defined by each country to deal with ethnic diversity. In this article, we study the policies designed and implemented by the United Kingdom and (...) France against “female genital mutilation” practices, analyzing how both British and French policies affected these types of practices. (shrink)

In this study, we set out to examine the role played by country institutional environments in explaining cross-country variation in the prevalence of women on corporate boards of directors. In order to address this question, we compare the predictive power and substantive implications of four existing typologies of national institutional environments due to Hall and Soskice (2001), La Porta et al., (1999), Weimar and Pape’s (1999), and Whitley (1991, 1996, 1999). These frameworks encapsulate a variety of national institutionalcharacteristics and provide (...) a means to a) evaluate the significance of national institutional environments for the presence of women on boards, and b) distinguish between the importance of various specific aspects of country institutional environments for board diversity. Our findings show that as much as half of the variation across countries in the presence of women on corporate boards is attributable to institutional factors and that legally-oriented institutions appear to play the most significant role in shaping board diversity. (shrink)

Why is there female under-representation among philosophy majors? We survey the hypotheses that have been proposed so far, grouping similar hypotheses together. We then propose a chronological taxonomy that distinguishes hypotheses according to the stage in undergraduates’ careers at which the hypotheses predict an increase in female under-representation. We then survey the empirical evidence for and against various hypotheses. We end by suggesting future avenues for research.

This paper explores the kinds of representations of the woman leader produced discursively in the Finnish business media. The paper draws on the idea that jobs and organizations are gendered and, to the extent that gendered features are valued differently, with masculinity being favoured particularly in managerial positions, the status of women and men leaders becomes unequal. Based on the assumption that the media form a powerful force which creates and maintains meanings in contemporary society, we focus on articles published (...) in a leading business newspaper and major business magazines in Finland. Three discourses are built based on the texts, namely a patriarchal, a victim and a professional discourse. The results of the study imply that the texts are largely reified in terms of masculinity, and that one underlying problem is the shortage of female role models and lack of the feminine perspective in the dominant discourse. It is suggested that, if we are to develop alternative, “new” ways of constructing the woman leader into being, the writing in the business media texts should opt to test the limits of the current discourses by voicing comments regarded as expressly feminine, instead of taking the masculine as the dominant norm. (shrink)

The description of named entities in terminological knowledge bases has never been addressed in any depth in terminology. Firm preconceptions, rooted in philosophy, about the only referential function of proper names have presumably led to disparage their inclusion in terminology resources, despite the relevance of named entities having been highlighted by prominent figures in the discipline of terminology. Scholars from different branches of linguistics depart from the conservative stance on proper names and have foregrounded the need for a novel (...) approach, more linguistic than philosophical, to describing proper names. Therefore, this paper proposed a linguistic and terminological approach to the study of named entities when used in scientific discourse, with the purpose of representing them in EcoLexicon, an environmental knowledge base designed according to the premises of Frame-based Terminology. We focused more specifically on named rivers mentioned in a coastal engineering corpus. Inclusion of named entities in terminological knowledge bases requires analyzing the context that surrounds them in specialized texts because these contexts convey specialized knowledge about named entities. For the semantic representation of context, this paper thus analyzed the local syntactic and semantic contexts that surrounded potamonyms in coastal engineering texts and described the semantic annotation of the predicate-argument structure of sentences where a potamonym was mentioned. The semantic variables annotated were the following: semantic category of the arguments; semantic role of the arguments; semantic relation between the arguments; and lexical domain of the verbs. This method yielded valuable insight into the different semantic roles that named rivers played, the entities and processes that participated in the events educed by potamonyms through verbs, and how they all interacted. Furthermore, since arguments are specialized terms and verbs are relational constructs, the analysis of argument structure led to the construction of semantic networks that depicted specialized knowledge about named rivers. These conceptual networks were then used to craft the thematic description of potamonyms. Accordingly, the semantic network and the thematic description not only constituted the representation of a potamonym in EcoLexicon, but also allowed the geographic contextualization of specialized concepts in the terminological resource. (shrink)

We examine the role of alignment between organizational social consciousness and the informal and formal institutions of a country in increasing female representation on boards. Using fixed-effects and Hausman Taylor regression methodology for endogenous covariate with panel data for the years 2006–2020, we find that the greater the alignment between organizational social consciousness and certain formal and informal institutions, the more progress there is toward gender representation on corporate boards in Europe. We also find that more socially (...) conscious firms make the most progress, often going beyond the minimum regulatory targets. By showing the complementarity of these factors, we address the enduring question of how the interplay of formal and informal institutions directly affects corporate behavior, thus contributing to the institutional, public policy/regulatory, and corporate governance literatures. We note the need for policymakers to go beyond mere codification of rules via quotas and simultaneously work toward raising national and organizational social consciousness levels on issues of gender equality. (shrink)

This paper presents new data on the representation of women who publish in 25 top philosophy journals as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report for the years 2004, 2014, and 2015. It also provides a new analysis of Schwitzgebel’s 1955–2015 journal data. The paper makes four points while providing an overview of the current state of women authors in philosophy. In all years and for all journals, the percentage of female authors was extremely low, in the range of (...) 14–16%. The percentage of women authors is less than the percentage of women faculty in different ranks and at different kinds of institutions. In addition, there is great variation across individual journals, and the discrepancy between women authors and women faculty appears to be different in different subfields. Interestingly, journals which do not practice anonymous review seem to have a higher percentage of women authors than journals which practice double anonymous or triple anonymous review. This paper also argues that we need more data on academic publishing to better understand whether this can explain why there are so few full-time female faculty in philosophy, since full-time hiring and tenuring practices presumably depend on a candidate’s academic publishing. (shrink)

This study investigates the online narratives Hong Kong employers construct around foreign domestic helpers and aims to compensate for the existing gap in discursive research and mainstream media, which tend to focus on the perspective of FDHs. It examines how employers portrayed FDHs both positively and negatively, as well as how they represented themselves in online environments. Critical discourse analysis was used to analyse more than 2000 Facebook posts on the subject of FDHs, identifying discursive strategies used in constructing both (...) power dynamics and identities. The findings revealed that nomination strategies dominated the discourse, constructing both the in- and out-group identities of FDHs. Other strategies, such as predication and augmentation, showed how employers portrayed themselves as opportunity-givers and food critics, which further contributed to the inferior self-perception of FDHs. The study concludes that employers have developed a sense of ideological ambivalence, in which they perceived FDHs as motherly figures while simultaneously maintaining their superior status. (shrink)

History-based trade books, such as biographies, narrative non-fiction, and expository texts, are essential secondary sources in social studies classrooms. Research, though, indicates a preponderance of misrepresentations in trade books’ depictions of historical eras and figures. We examined trade books’ historical representation of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, an iconic American president. The data sample featured biographies targeting various grade-ranges and published in different eras. Including books targeting early grade, middle grade, and high school students enabled comparisons of historical representation (...) within and between different grade-ranges. Incorporating texts published in different eras allowed for consideration of how Kennedy's historical representation changed over time. Mixed methods content analysis—reliant on both open and axial-coding—yielded important findings about how children's and young adult authors depicted Kennedy's family history, particularly during World War II, privileged social position, Catholicism, wife, health, tensions during his presidency, and his assassination and subsequent conspiracy theories. Trade books’ representations appeared to be shaped more by date-of-publication than intended age of the reader. Identified historical misrepresentations included presentism, omission, exceptionalism, and heroification. Significance for teachers and researchers is articulated and practical classroom suggestions are provided. (shrink)

Contemporary feminist critics have often described Surrealism as a misogynist movement. In Automatic Woman, Katharine Conley addresses this issue, confirming some feminist allegations while qualifying and overturning others. Through insightfuløanalyses of works by a range of writers and artists, Conley develops a complex view of Surrealist portrayals of Woman. Conley begins with a discussion of the composite image of Woman developed by such early male Surrealists as Andrä Breton, Francis Picabia, and Paul Eluard. She labels that image ?Automatic Woman??a term (...) that comprises views of Woman as provocative and revolutionary but also as a depersonalized object largely devoid of individuality and volition. This analysis largely confirms feminist critiques of Surrealism. The heart of the book, however, examines the writings of Leonora Carrington and Unica Z_rn, two women in the Surrealist movement whose works, Conley argues, anticipate much contemporary feminist art and theory. In concluding, Conley shows how Breton?s own views on women evolved in the course of his long career, arriving at last at a position far more congenial to contemporary feminists. Automatic Woman is distinguished by Katharine Conley?s judicious understanding of how women?and the image of Woman?figured in Surrealism. The book is an important contemporary account of a cultural movement that continues to fascinate, influence, and provoke us. (shrink)

This essay examines media images of women in recent conflicts in the Middle East. From the Abu Ghraib prison abuses to protests in Iran, women have become the public face of violence, carried out and suffered. Women’s bodies are figured as sexual and violent, a potent combination that stirs public imagination and feeds into stereotypes of women as femme fatales or “bombshells.”.

Anatomy texts are seen as authoritative sources for knowledge about natural sex differences. The concepts of a natural, biological sex and of a natural difference are, however, increasingly difficult to sustain. A growing number of scholars have pointed to the fact that `sex' as much as `gender' is a historical and social construction. This article examines how the multiple-edition anatomy textbook, Gray's Anatomy, has portrayed the sexed body and male/female differences during the course of its publication, 1858 to the (...) present, focusing on specific parts of the anatomy, namely the sex organs or `organs of generation', the pelvis, the skull and the brain. An analysis of textual descriptions and graphic illustrations reveals that the male body has been the stable norm or standard against which the female body has been compared and implicitly judged as underdeveloped, weak or faulty. Only rarely has the male body been compared with the female body. Reflecting long-standing views about sexual complementarity and natural differences between men and women, some comparisons emphasize the reproductive functioning of females or imply that females are intellectually inferior. It would appear that the discipline of anatomy has remained largely immune from broader public debates about sexual inequality and gender representations. (shrink)

Why does female under- representation emerge during undergraduate education? At the University of Sydney, we surveyed students before and after their first philosophy course. We failed to find any evidence that this course disproportionately discouraged female students from continuing in philosophy relative to male students. Instead, we found evidence of an interaction effect between gender and existing attitudes about philosophy coming into tertiary education that appears at least partially responsible for this poor retention. At the first lecture, (...) disproportionately few female students intended to major. Further, at the first lecture, female students were less interested in philosophy, were less self-confident about philosophy, and were less able to imagine themselves as philosophers. Similarly, female students predicted they would feel more uncomfortable in philosophy classes than male students did. Further study with a control is warranted to determine whether this interaction effect is peculiar to philosophy, or whether it is indicative of a more general gendered trend amongst first year undergraduate students. (shrink)

Cohen deals with the question of the possibility for art to represent God or the divine in some of his works, throughout all his philosophical production, but obviously above all in his main aesthetic work, sthetik des reinen Gefhls. We can state that in Cohen's works this problem is posed with reference to three different religious fields: Greek polytheism, Jewish monotheism and Christianity. The topic of this essay will be Cohen's thought about the artistic representation of the divine in (...) Christianity or in Christian art through the representation of Jesus. This topic will be examined with reference both to Kants Begrndung der sthetik and to sthetik des reinen Gefhls ; whereas in Kants Begrndung der sthetik Cohen devotes to the representation of Jesus just a short consideration in the historical introduction of the book, in sthetik des reinen Gefhls the representation of Jesus is object of far more attention. Here, Cohen's answer to the question of the possibility to represent the divine through the representation of Jesus is that Jesus' divinity, in the artistic representation of his figure, can only have a metaphorical value, the real meaning of which is that Jesus' story is the ideal story of the human being; in Kants Begrndung der sthetik and in other writings of the 80s, on the contrary, the idea of incarnation and of the divinity of Jesus is object of a different appreciation by Cohen. The comparison between these different stances can be a contribution to the comprehension of the changes in Cohen's view of Christianity through the years. (shrink)

This article deals with questions concerning the nature of representation of the female body within the so-called `oriental' discourse in Serbian art: Who is the painter? For whom is the work painted? With whom is the work identified? With what other possibilities of identification does the work leave us? In the context of the historical codes, a stance towards a body is seen as a projection of the social, cultural and power impulses. In the first case studied, the (...) artist was a male commissioned by the Serbian court to paint a series of paintings for the indigenous population and foreigners. In the second case, the artist was also male, a Serb working in Vienna, who painted for the audience of the `real Europe' from the position of an identity alteration. The third case focuses on a female artist, Babett Bachmayer Vukanovic, who was born in Germany but after marrying a Serb moved to her husband's homeland. Visual constructions of female bodies are used as the starting point for the deconstruction of ignored gender-related questions in analysing époque. (shrink)

While the turn to vulnerability in law responds to a recurrent critique by feminist scholars on the disembodiment of legal personhood, this article suggests that the mobilization of vulnerability in the criminal courts does not necessarily offer female drug mules a direct path to justice. Through an analysis of sentencing appeals of female drug mules in England and Wales, this article presents a feminist critique of the dispositif of the person and its relation to vulnerability. Discourses on drug (...) mules’ vulnerability mobilize the trope of the colonial victim in need of protection, which is often translated into legal mercy. But mercy is rather an expression of biopower which inscribes not only fragility onto the bodies of drug mules by figuring them as exemplar paradigms of colonial subjectivity, but also reinvigorates the dispositif of gender implicit in the legal person. In this set-up, it would appear as if law and politics totalize the registers of life, in this case the contours of vulnerable body. The article suggests we must revisit the image of the wounded body in order to carve out a space for resistance. Drawing on Elaine Scarry and Judith Butler, it suggests vulnerable bodies are marked by a semiotic openness, which renders them subject to appropriation but also able to signify the precarity produced by the law through their resistance to representation. (shrink)