Joanna Liddle

Feminism, Imperialism and Orientalism: the challenge of the 'Indian woman'

Abstract This article examines the content and process of imperialist discourse on the ‘Indian woman’ in the writings of two North American women, one writing at the time of ‘first wave’ feminism, the other a key exponent of the ‘second wave’ of the movement. By analysing these writings, it demonstrates how the content of the discourse was reproduced over time ith different but parallel effects in the changed political circumstances, in the first case producing the Western imperial powers as superior on the scale of civilisation, and in the second case producing Western women as the leaders of global feminism. It also identifies how the process of creating written images occurred within the context of each authors social relations with the subject, the reader and the other authors, showing how an orientalist discourse can be produced through the authors representation of the human subjects of whom she writes; how this discourse can be reproduced through the authors uncritical use of earlier writers; an...

Gender, Class and Political Power in Britain: Narratives of Entitlement

Women are heavily under-represented in positions of public leadership in Britain today. It is no longer the case that women are confined to the domestic sphere and excluded from public life, yet despite radical changes in gender relations over the last 50 years, women’s participation in institutions of public policy-making has had limited effects in changing the gender balance of public power.

Gender and colonialism: Women's organisation under the Raj

Abstract The popular media have recently born witness to a renewed interest in India under British rule. This article examines the portrayal of Indian liberation struggles in two of the more serious expositions, The Jewel in the Crown and Gandhi , questioning the political implications of this portrayal. It shows that they both neglect the crucial role played by women in the maintenance and demise of the Raj. We argue that womens contribution was so significant that its omission constitutes a misrepresentation of history that can fairly be termed revisionist. We suggest that the reason for this process of mystification lies in the relevance of Indias fight for national liberation and sexual equality in the early twentieth century, to present day struggles against imperialism and male domination, which are two of the most explosive issues affecting the modern Western world.

Gender, class and power in Japan: does social origin affect women’s access to power in employment?

This paper looks at how far women’s access to positions of power in the labour market is independent of class background, looking at the case of Japanese women in professional and managerial employment. It questions both the conventional approach to the class analysis of women, as well as the dismissal of the concept of class in understanding women and power. Using three different indicators of social origin, based on father’s employment position, mother’s work status and employment position, and parents’ cultural capital, it argues that women’s access to positions of power in employment is not independent of social origin. On the contrary, a privileged class background was more important for women than it was for men in gaining entry into professional and managerial employment. The paper also looks at how the inclusion of women in the anlaysis effects our understanding of class, and proposes the use of both conventional and alternative theoretical and methodological approaches to understand the complex relationships between gender, class and power.

Introduction— understanding local/global identities: Towards a materialist discursive feminism

Abstract This editorial introduces 16 articles originating at the 1999 Womens Studies Network (UK) conference. It begins by telling the story of the long process by which we published the articles, considering some of the implications of this process for equality of access to the global production of knowledge in womens/gender studies. It then proposes an analytical framework for understanding this collection in terms of the development of a materialist discursive feminism. Finally, it explains how the articles have been organised, and outlines each contribution, paying attention to the way the articles are both located within and constitutive of the framework.

Gender, Class and Public Power

The question we are asking in this chapter is: does class background differentiate men and women in positions of public power, and if so how? Our hypothesis is that women leaders come from higher class backgrounds than male leaders, and the evidence suggests that, in most of the dimensions of class examined, there is a significant relationship between gender and class in the direction proposed.

Gender and Imperialism in British India

Rama Joshi The British used the particular form which gender divisions.took in India as a vehicleforproving.their liberality, as a demonstration of their superiority, and as a legitimation of their rule. They signally failed to understand the particular form of male supremacy in their own culture, or to analyse how they created and reirforced aspects of male oppression within Indian culture, seeing no parallels between the different culturalforms of male dominance in the two countries. The womens movement in India did not concentrate on male supremacy to the exclusion of foreign domination as the cause of their inequality, for in India male domination alone did not account for womens subordination. The colonists both improved womens position and worsened it in particular ways, but their actions were dictated, not out of concern for women, but out of the desire to maintain their financial inlterests and political power in the foreign country. Equally, it is clear that womens inequality was not identical with foreign rule, for the men in the nationalist movement opposed the womens demands when these threatened male privileges in the family; and despite the gains made at Independence, womens subordination did not disappear with the ending of political domination. The womens movement recognised this, constructing their demands around womens domestic, as well as political oppression, and organising autonomously for the emancipation of women rather than simply absorbing themselves into the freedom movement. So the Indian womens movement attacked both male supremacy and foreign domination. What inhibited them from emphasising male supremacy as one cause of their oppression was the use thait would be made of such a focus in Britain. This concern itself supports the movements analysis that neither male domination nor imperialism alone accounts for womens subordination, but that both act upon the gender division, and are linked in perpetuating womens oppression.

States of distinction: gender, Japan and the international political economy

Abstract This article looks at the question of how to understand the link between the changing position of women and gender relations and the changes in the global political economy. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the authors argue that states compete for respectability and distinction on the world stage, and that they deploy particular material articulations of gender and class relations as forms of symbolic capital for the nation. The authors demonstrate this using Japan as an example, tracing changes in the condition and representation of women between 1856 and 1945, as Japans position in the global hierarchy of nations moved from a subordinated through a resisting to a colonising country. The authors suggest that women and gender relations are central to understanding international relations, and they propose a conceptual framework for analysing the significance of women and gender in the global political economy

Women, Violence and the Trade Union

This article looks at women’s experience of workplace violence and how it differs from men’s experience. The methods used were a survey of 43 trade unions affiliated to the West Midlands Regional Trade Union Congress (TUC) in the UK, asking about policies on violence against women, and two case studies of workplaces where violence had taken place. One of these was a bakery factory, the other was a government welfare benefits office. The case studies demonstrated some of the specific ways in which

Book Reviews : Enterprising Women: Ethnicity, Economy and Gender Relations by Sallie Westwood and Parminder Bhachu (eds). London: Routledge, 1988

’I was actually born here, you know’. So speaks a woman whose parents migrated from Hong Kong, conscious of being British but not looking British. The relationship between gender, race and class is examined in this important collection of articles, which looks at the experience of women migrating to the U.K., the economic position in which they are placed, and their access to the labour market. The context for this examination is the global division of labour founded upon colonial exploitation. Migrant labour creates profits for British capital because employers do