The objective of the work is to analyze the intersectional discriminations that operate in the multiple identities of regional migrant women in the field of health in Argentina during the present pandemic. We will begin with the critical study of key categories and the origin of the inequalities of law of the aforementioned discrimination in migration policies. Second, we will address de facto inequalities, particularly examining the socio-economic inequalities suffered by migrants during the pandemic. Thirdly, in order to enable alternative (...) forms of care and self-care from the recognition of their ethnicity and the inseparable care of the earth, we propose the application of the concept of territorial participatory justice as a condition of intercultural dialogue in health. As a proposal, it seeks to promote dialogues of knowledge located outside the bureaucratic councils and expanding the social base of health rights from the pluriculturality exercised in care networks of migrant women in the territory and not from their domesticated participation. (shrink)

This article examines the complex intertwinements of feminism, anti-colonial Marxism and imperialism in the work of the recent Literature Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, particularly in her writings on colonial Africa and the travelogue African Laughter. The article outlines the implications of these intersections for the representation of Zimbabwe against some political, aesthetic and epistemological developments in Lessing's oeuvre. Through a reading of African Laughter, the article argues that a crucial tension is at stake between Lessing's political project of giving (...) voice to black Zimbabweans and the western female protagonist as the authoritative subject of this project. The aim is to render an innovative perspective of Doris Lessing's status as a feminist icon, which she gained in the wake of her acclaimed novel The Golden Notebook, by proceeding from postcolonial feminist scholarship. (shrink)

Las formas de pensar la dominación social han cambiado durante las últimas décadas en la teoría política, dejando atrás esquemas diádicos con centros de poder definidos. En este artículo comparamos autores de la nueva lectura de Marx, la crítica del valor y la interseccionalidad, que han ayudado redefinir la dominación social durante las últimas décadas complejizando los paradigmas que las preceden, el marxismo tradicional y el feminismo negro, respectivamente. El artículo analiza el concepto de dominación social de estas nuevas lecturas (...) de Marx atendiendo a las críticas que la interseccionalidad ha dirigido contra el marxismo tradicional. Así mostramos las posibilidades de diálogo entre estos enfoques, pero también las innegables dificultades que existen. (shrink)

Posthumanist feminist theory has been instrumental in demonstrating the salience of gender and sexism in structuring human–animal relationships and in revealing the connections between the oppression of women and of nonhuman animals. Despite the richness of feminist posthumanist theorizations it has been suggested that their influence in contemporary animal ethics has been muted. This marginalization of feminist work—here, in its posthumanist version—is a systemic issue within theory and needs to be remedied. At the same time, the limits of posthumanist feminist (...) theory must also be addressed. Although posthumanist feminist theory has generated a sophisticated body of work analyzing how gendered and sexist discourses and practices subordinate women and animals alike, its imprint in producing intersectional analyses of animal issues is considerably weaker. This leaves theorists vulnerable to charges of essentialism, ethnocentrism, and elitism despite best intentions to avoid such effects and despite commitments to uproot all forms of oppression. Gender-focused accounts also preclude understanding of the importance of race and culture in structuring species-based oppression. To counter these undesirable pragmatic and conceptual developments, posthumanist feminist theory needs to engender feminist accounts that centralize the structural axes of race and culture. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have increasingly expressed their worries about the depoliticization of intersectionality since it has travelled from its point of origin in US Black feminist theory to the shores of Europe. They have argued that the subject for which the theory was intended has been displaced, that Black feminists have been excluded from the discussion, and that white European feminists have usurped all the credit for intersectionality as theory. Intersectionality has been transformed into a product of the neoliberal academy rather (...) than the helpmeet for social justice it was meant to be. This article explores three of the bones of contention in these debates about intersectionality and its travels. The author argues that they rest on notions of ownership that, while understandable, are untenable and, ultimately, counterproductive. A case will be made for taking a less proprietary stance toward critical theories and instead treating the travels of intersectionality as an occasion for dialogue rather than a contest over ownership. (shrink)

Feminist legal theory has undergone some significant changes over the past thirty years. This article provides an introductory overview of feminist legal theory, from liberal and radical feminism through to postmodernism. It outlines some of the major current issues within feminist legal thought, notably debates surrounding culture and religion, the relationship of sex and sexuality scholarship to feminist research, and the position of women within transitional societies.

Since its inception, the concept of `intersectionality' — the interaction of multiple identities and experiences of exclusion and subordination — has been heralded as one of the most important contributions to feminist scholarship. Despite its popularity, there has been considerable confusion concerning what the concept actually means and how it can or should be applied in feminist inquiry. In this article, I look at the phenomenon of intersectionality's spectacular success within contemporary feminist scholarship, as well as the uncertainties and confusion (...) which it has generated. Drawing upon insights from the sociology of science, I shall show how and why intersectionality could become a feminist success story. I shall argue that, paradoxically, it is precisely the concept's alleged weaknesses — its ambiguity and open-endedness — that were the secrets to its success and, more generally, make it a good feminist theory. (shrink)

The dialogue between Pūjanī and Brahmadatta is a lesser known episode in the Mahābhārata. This paper explores how Pūjanī’s voice is relevant when rethinking autonomy for feminist relational selves. I first unravel the different ‘stories’ that can be told through this single but multi-layered narrative. Then, by re-arranging their insights and using the idea of ‘normative authority’ proposed by Catriona Mackenzie, I piece together a picture of autonomy foregrounding dependence on others and volatile emotionality––both of which are generally thought to (...) be opposed to ‘being in control’ or being autonomous. This emerging picture of self-governance indicates how even selves constituted by relationships to others can exit relational situations that are or become harmful. I also show that the episode leaves behind ‘internalist’ conceptions of autonomy for more capacious notions of self-determination that incorporate the importance of structural changes for agentive freedom. This goes beyond the insights of the Mahābhārata in a self-reflexive move built into the story itself. (shrink)

On the 24th June 2015, Feminist Legal Studies and the London School of Economics Law Department hosted an afternoon event with Professor Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science, University of California. Professor Brown kindly agreed to discuss her scholarship on feminist theory, and its relationship to both the law and neoliberalism. The event included an interview by Dr Katie Cruz and a Q&A session, which are presented here in an edited version of the transcript. Sumi Madhock, (...) Professor of Gender Studies, LSE chaired the interview and discussion and introduced Professor Brown’s work. Katie Cruz asked Wendy Brown to reflect upon topics that span her scholarship and activism, including the state of critical, feminist, and Left approaches to rights, neoliberalism, despair and utopianism, and the future of feminist theory and practice in the context of neoliberalism and current debates about intersectionality. Participants in the discussion asked questions on a wide range of issues, including the limits of feminist engagement with law as a tool for social change, the dominance of neoliberalism, imperialist feminism, Islamophobia, secularism, and our attachment to the figure of homo politicus. (shrink)

Gender imbalances persist throughout the world, particularly at leadership level, and equally also visible in the case of trade unions. This article focuses on CGTP-IN, the largest Portuguese trade union confederation, and sets out analysis incorporating both figures from this organisation and accounts by female members of CGTP-IN unions. Results confirm the existence of gender asymmetries, especially at the highest leadership levels. Analysis of the discourses of these women leaders reveals some awareness of the influence of gender on professional relations, (...) placing women at a disadvantage, especially where leadership is concerned. Furthermore, four reasons driving the persistence of these gender asymmetries in trade union leadership/decision-making roles were identified: family responsibilities, gendered professional segregation, masculine trade union cultures and traditional gender stereotypes. Nevertheless, the interviewees resist to means of affirmative action such as gender quotas, and instead prefer to prioritise education and raising awareness around gender equality. (shrink)

The general scholarship on armed conflict in Manipur, India, ignores the experiences of women as agents. Feminist scholarship counters this tendency, revealing women's everyday responses to the violence that constrains them. However, this scholarship often fails to be intersectional, and it lauds every instance of women's agency without evaluating it in terms of its ability to build peace. Employing Kimberlé Crenshaw's underused distinction between structural and political intersectionality and Saba Mahmood's concept of agency, I analyze my field research conducted with (...) women's peacebuilding groups in Manipur in 2014 and 2015. Using structural intersectionality, I first describe the qualitatively different experiences of women peacebuilders living at different social locations. Using political intersectionality as a normative tool, I then show that ethnic and religious hierarchies often disrupt women's attempts to build peace. Interethnic peacebuilding groups that rely on gender-based solidarity tend to privilege the experiences of the women coming from the majority ethnic group. Other peacebuilding groups, bound by ethnicity, often distrust and resent women who come from different ethnic enclaves. I argue that women's peacebuilding agency must aim at an inclusive justpeace if it is to succeed. We should evaluate agency, rather than glorifying all instances of women's responses to violence. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 243-251, March 2022.

Discourses often uncover underlying social boundaries related to concepts such as ethnicity, gender and religion. By applying an intersectional approach, this article shows how the gendering of ethno-religious boundaries is central in the narratives of parents of Belgian, Italian and Moroccan origin, living in Flanders, Belgium. These processes are extremely salient when discourses on partner choice are discussed, as is the focal point in the current study. The construction of boundaries and identities are deeply influenced by dominant social representations. The (...) results show how the construction and justification of boundaries can also have restrictive consequences for individuals. Parents want to restrict daughters for their own good, and exogamy seems to be the prerogative of sons. (shrink)

We examine the emergence of the ‘postfeminist’ sensibility from feminist theory and praxis, and its relation and relevance to education. Analytical frameworks such as postfeminism and intersectionality have given equal weight to recognition-based struggles, such as those based on sexual, racial, class-based, gender-related identities. We follow Nancy Fraser’s argument that these identity-based movements have been co-opted by neoliberal politicians and bureaucratic policy-makers, and become a divide and rule strategy, neglecting the subjugating power of capital. Beginning with third-wave feminism’s emphasis on (...) individual identity, women’s struggles have been become a part of the greater parisitic neoliberal project. We consider the implications of this docile and domesticated feminism for the education of women. (shrink)

In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at (...) various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together. (shrink)

Taking debates about the roles of structure and agency in health as a lens, this essay asks how Critical Realist and Feminist Intersectional approaches might inform health interventions research. Despite recognition of multiple determinants of health, health problems are often thought of as individual and interventions, in turn, target risky individual behaviours. Such approaches are rooted in a liberal model of personhood. This paper critiques enduring individualist assumptions linked to Western liberal underpinnings embedded in health interventions. It posits the need (...) to include a robust conception of the social world in which change depends on shifting power relations, and individual agency is shaped by power as well as individual will. We propose preliminary steps for undertaking critical realist intersectional interventions research. (shrink)

Intergenerational storytelling (IGS) has recently emerged as an arts- and humanities-focused approach to aging research. Despite growing appeal and applications, however, IGS methods, practices, and foundational concepts remain indistinct. In response to such heterogeneity, our objective was to comprehensively describe the state of IGS in aging research and assess the critical (e.g., conceptual, ethical, and social justice) issues raised by its current practice. Six databases (PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, AgeLine, and Sociological Abstracts) were searched using search terms relating to _age_, (...) _intergenerational_, _story_, and _storytelling_. Peer-reviewed, English-language studies conducted with participants residing in non-clinical settings were included. One thousand one hundred six (1106) studies were initially retrieved; 70 underwent full review, and 26 fulfilled all inclusion criteria. Most studies characterized IGS as a practice involving older adults (> 50 years old) and conventionally-aged postsecondary/college students (17–19 years old). Typical methodologies included oral and, in more recent literature, digital storytelling. Critical issues included inconsistently reported participant data, vast variations in study design and methods, undefined key concepts, including _younger_ vs. _older_ cohorts, _generation_, _storytelling_, and whether IGS comprised an intentional _research method_ or a retrospective _outcome_. While IGS holds promise as an emerging field of arts- and humanities-based aging research, current limitations include a lack of shared data profiles and comparable study designs, limited cross-cultural representation, and insufficiently intersectional analysis of widespread IGS practices. To encourage more robust standards for future study design, data collection, and researcher reflexivity, we propose seven evidence-based recommendations for evolving IGS as a humanities-based approach to research in aging and intergenerational relations. (shrink)

Despite a growing focus on processes to promote gender equity, women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership positions in the Global South. In the present study we focus on the role of familial experiences in shaping and contesting gender ideologies of Pakistani women in the workplace. We specifically examine the reciprocal ways in which women leaders and their family members shape each other’s gender ideologies regarding the workplace. Data collected and analyzed for this study were semi-structured interviews with eight women in (...) positions of leadership in Lahore, Pakistan, and interviews with one family members of each of the women leaders. Using thematic narrative analysis, we identified three thematic phases: learning gender expectations, resistance, and familial transformation. These phases reflect the progression of developing, resisting, and influencing individual and familial gender ideologies. We document the manifestation of these phases in three specific domains: education, marriage and motherhood, and the workplace. We then discuss how these findings contribute to understanding the experiences of women leaders and perceptions of their family members regarding women’s role in the workplace. Findings from our research provide novel insights into the ways globalization and capitalism continue to shape the socio-cultural context for women leaders in the Global South. (shrink)

Vocal fry is a phonation, or voicing, in which an individual drops their voice below its natural register and consequently emits a low, growly, creaky tone of voice. Media outlets have widely acknowledged it as a generational vocal style characteristic of millennial women. Critics of vocal fry often claim that it is an exclusively female vocal pattern, and some say that the voicing is so distracting that they cannot understand what is being said under the phonation. Claiming that a phonation (...) is so distracting as to prevent uptake of the semantic content of an utterance associated with it is an extreme reaction, especially when accompanied by demands for women to change their phonation. We argue that this reaction limits women's communicative autonomy. We analyze the extreme reaction to female vocal fry, which we characterize as a non-content-based response, from the perspectives of philosophy of language, feminist epistemology, and linguistics. We argue that when fry is heard as annoying and distracting, it is because the hearer interprets the speaker as echoing an utterance from a position of authority to which she is not entitled. We show that this reaction encodes conscious or unconscious sexist attitudes toward women's voices. (shrink)

The literature on epistemic injustice currently displays a logocentric or propositional bias that excludes people with intellectual disabilities from the scope of epistemic agency and the demands of epistemic justice. This paper develops an account of epistemic agency and injustice that is inclusive of both people with and people without intellectual disabilities. I begin by specifying the hitherto undertheorized notion of epistemic agency. I develop a broader, pluralist account of epistemic agency, which relies on a conception of knowledge that accounts (...) not only for propositional knowing, but also for other types of knowing that have been largely neglected in debates on epistemic injustice and agency. Based on this pluralist account of epistemic agency, I then show that people with intellectual disabilities qualify as epistemic agents and therefore as subjects of epistemic justice. Finally, I argue that this pluralist account of epistemic agency pushes us to revisit the current conception of epistemic injustice and to expand its taxonomy in two important ways. (shrink)

J’aborde tout d’abord l’objection relativiste aux droits humains, afin de pouvoir ensuite me concentrer sur d’autres questions soulevées par la question des droits humains et des minorités culturelles. Le but de ma discussion est d’identifier et d’interroger les tensions potentielles entre minorités culturelles et droits humains, afin de montrer en quoi les droits humains peuvent protéger les minorités culturelles et, ultimement, de problématiser la manière dont cette protection peut se déployer. Dans ce but, je commence par clarifier deux notions-clés de (...) ce débat : les minorités culturelles et les droits différenciés selon l’appartenance à un groupe, en en proposant une typologie. J’examine ensuite dans quelle mesure les aspects collectiviste et particulariste des droits différenciés se trouvent ou non en tension respectivement avec les aspects individualiste et universaliste des droits humains. Prenant comme points de référence quelques droits humains particuliers, je me penche enfin sur la situation de certaines minorités culturelles dans les démocraties libérales occidentales pour dégager les conditions délibératives de la réalisation de ces droits humains. Au fil de ces trois sections, une de mes préoccupations est de mettre en lumière les enjeux méthodologiques qui sous-tendent ces différents débats et de montrer la nécessité d’adopter une approche améliorative. I first address the relativist challenge to human rights, so as to be able to focus next on other questions raised by the question of human rights and cultural minorities. The aim of my discussion is to identify and to question the potential tensions between cultural minorities and human rights, in order to show how human rights can protect cultural minorities, and ultimately to problematize the way in which this protection can take place. To that end, I start by clarifying two key notions in this debate : cultural minorities and group-differentiated rights, by proposing a typology. I then examine to what extent the collectivist and the particularist aspects of group-differentiated rights are in tension respectively with the individualist and the universalist aspects of human rights. Taking as reference points a few particular human rights, I turn, finally, to the situation of certain cultural minorities in western liberal democracies to draw out the deliberative conditions of the realization of those human rights. Throughout all three sections, one of my concerns is to shed light on the methodological stakes underlying those different debates and to show that we should adopt an ameliorative approach. (shrink)

This paper seeks to destabilize the silent privilege given to the secured juridical-political position of the citizen as the stable site of enunciation of the problem/solution framework under which the stranger (foreigner, immigrant, refugee) is theoretically located. By means of textual, intertextual, and extratextual readings of Antigone, the paper argues that it is politically and literarily possible to (re)invent her for strangers in the twenty-first century, that is, for those symbolically produced as not-legally locatable and who resignify their ambivalent ontological (...) status between life and death as an alternative sociopolitical location of speech and action in equality with “others.”. (shrink)

In feminist theory, intersectionality has become the predominant way of conceptualizing the relation between systems of oppression which construct our multiple identities and our social locations in hierarchies of power and privilege. The aim of this essay is to clarify the origins of intersectionality as a metaphor, and its theorization as a provisional concept in Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s work, followed by its uptake and mainstreaming as a paradigm by feminist theorists in a period marked by its widespread and rather unquestioned--if, (...) at times, superficial and inattentive--usage. I adduce four analytic benefits of intersectionality as a research paradigm: simultaneity, complexity, irreducibility and inclusivity. Then, I gesture at, and respond to some critiques of intersectionality advanced in the last few years, during which the concept has increasingly come under scrutiny. (shrink)

El artículo analiza el desarrollo de la interseccionalidad como concepto presente en el proceso de juzgar con perspectiva de género, en particular, su impacto en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Corte IDH). La metodología utilizada es cualitativa, principalmente, revisión de sentencias de la Corte IDH. De las 13 sentencias seleccionadas en el período 2015-2022 se concluye que la Corte IDH ha incorporado progresivamente la perspectiva interseccional y la ha usada como categoría analítica para estudiar, entender y (...) hacer frente a las discriminaciones que constituyen una forma agravada de discriminación y barreras de acceso a la justicia. (shrink)

In this paper, I revisit Kimberlé Crenshaw's argument in “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989) to recover a companion metaphor that has been largely forgotten in the “mainstreaming” of intersectionality in (white-dominated) feminist theory. In addition to the now-famous intersection metaphor, Crenshaw offers the basement metaphor to show how—by privileging monistic, mutually exclusive, and analogically constituted categories of “race” and “sex” tethered, respectively, to masculinity and whiteness—antidiscrimination law functions to reproduce social hierarchy, rather than to remedy it, denying (...) Black women plaintiffs legal redress. I argue that in leaving the basement behind, deployments of “intersectionality” that deracinate the concept from its origins in Black feminist thought also occlude Crenshaw's account of the socio-legal reproduction of hierarchical power. (shrink)

It is clear that philosophy has a “woman problem”. Despite the recent acceptance of this fact, it is less clear what ought to be done about it. In this paper, we argue that philosophy as a discipline is uniquely well-positioned to think through the marginalisation suffered by women and other minorities. We therefore interrogate two values that already undergird conversations about inclusion— representation and intersectionality—in order to think about the path ahead. We argue that, once we have done so, it (...) becomes clear that the slow pace of improvement over the last few decades is unacceptable and more radical steps need to be taken. First, we outline the current state of women in philosophy focusing on three areas: levels of employment, publishing, and sexual harassment. Then we turn to representation and intersectionality respectively. We conclude by arguing that many women and people of colour have been arguing for a more radically diverse philosophy for many years. What we are facing is a lack of ambition on the one hand and problem of attention on the other. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the ways we look to children to educate us and explores how we might depart from that dynamic, exploring how a range of conceptual frameworks from historical and cultural studies and psychoanalysis might contribute to understanding the problematic of childhood, its problems and its limitations. While ‘child as educator’ may appear to reverse the typical power relations between adults and children, it is argued that this motif in fact repeats many of the same problems as any (...) claims about what children, and especially what ‘child’, is like. Specifically, the paper first reviews analyses of what is at stake in the figure of ‘child’; second, feminist engagement with the notion of ‘intersectionality’ is discussed in terms of how it might inform debates about childhood. Finally, drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches, analysis focuses on the notion of misrecognition structured in the ‘as’ connecting ‘child’ and ‘educator’. (shrink)

Canadian and American population-based research concerning sexual and/or gender minority populations provides evidence of persistent breast and gynecologic cancer-related health disparities and knowledge divides. The Cancer's Margins research investigates the complex intersections of sexual and/or gender marginality and incommensurabilities and improvisation in engagements with biographical and biomedical cancer knowledge. The study examines how sexuality and gender are intersectionally constitutive of complex biopolitical mappings of cancer health knowledge that shape knowledge access and its mobilization in health and treatment decision-making. Interviews were (...) conducted with a diverse group of sexual and/or gender minority breast or gynecologic cancer patients. The LGBQ//T2 cancer patient narratives we have analyzed document in fine grain detail how it is that sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients punctuate the otherwise lockstep assemblage of their cancer treatment decision-making with a persistent engagement in creative attempts to resist, thwart and otherwise manage the possibility of discrimination and likewise, the probability of institutional erasure in care settings. Our findings illustrate the demands that cancer places on LGBQ//T2 patients to choreograph access to, and mobilization of knowledge and care, across significantly distinct and sometimes incommensurable systems of knowledge. (shrink)

Contemporary Western feminism and transpersonalism are kaleidoscopic, consisting of interlocking influences, yet the fields have developed in parallel rather than in tandem. Both schools of praxis developed during the climate of activism and social experimentation of the 1960s in the United States, and both share a non-pathological view of the human experience. This discussion suggests loci of synthesized theoretical constructs between the two disciplines as well as distinct concepts and practices in both disciplines that may serve the other. Ways in (...) which a feminist-transpersonal perspective may catalyze social change on personal, regional, and global levels are proposed. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to engage critically with feminist HIV/aids research from an ‘intersectional’ perspective. Focusing in particular on the work of Tamsin Wilton and Janet Holland et al., the article examines how ‘race’, ethnicity and class are theorized and conceptualized in this literature. Through a scrutiny of their empirical analyses, the article points to the pitfalls of a descriptive approach to ‘differences’ and problematizes Wilton's and Holland et al.'s theoretical focus on gender and sexuality. The benefit of (...) including a critical perspective on ‘race’ and ethnicity and other axes of domination is illustrated further using some empirical examples from the Swedish HIV/aids policy context. The article concludes by arguing that an intersectional perspective poses a challenge to feminist HIV/aids research that needs to be addressed in order to produce an effective sexual health policy. (shrink)

Contemporary approaches to adolescent development are framed by positive youth development models. A key outcome of these models is that healthy and positively developing youth are more likely to contribute to their family, schools, and communities. However, little work on contribution and its antecedents has been conducted with youth of color. As high achieving youth of color often become leaders in their communities, it is important to consider malleable predictors of contribution within this population. Therefore, through a cross-sectional design, we (...) examined the relations between youth critical reflection, hopeful future expectations, and mentoring relationship quality and youth contribution in a sample of 177 youth of color (60% Black, 40% Latinx) attending an afterschool college preparation program at six sites around the U.S. Results indicated that youth critical reflection, hopeful future expectations, and mentoring relationship quality significantly predicted contribution. Exploratory analyses suggested that these relations were significant for Black youth but not Latinx youth. Implications of these findings for future scholarship are discussed. (shrink)

An absolute decline in US life expectancy in low education whites has alarmed policy makers and attracted media attention. Depending on which studies are correct, low education white women have lost between 3 and 5 years of lifespan; men, between 6 months and 3 years. Although absolute declines in life expectancy are relatively rare, some commentators see the public alarm as reflecting a racist concern for white lives over black ones. How ought we ethically to evaluate this lifespan contraction in (...) low education whites? Should we care, or is it racist to care? Does it constitute an injustice or reflect justice being done? I argue that the lifespan contraction in low education whites violates key normative criteria used to make determinations of health justice, and that these judgments do not vitiate concerns about racism. I conclude with reflections on US population health policy and building an inclusive health equity movement. (shrink)

This article considers how Margaret Jane Radin’s theory of the feminist double bind can bring conceptual clarity to the difficulties feminisms face in engaging with political and legal institutions of global governance. I draw on her theory to reinitiate a conversation on ideal and nonideal theory, in order to answer the call of key proponents in international legal feminism to reevaluate methodologies in critiquing mainstream institutions. By providing an account of how to navigate the double bind, this article brings conceptual (...) clarity to the tension between resistance and compliance that has been argued to lie at the heart of the feminist project in international law. I demonstrate how this theoretical framework can foster greater pluralist perspectives in feminist engagement of ideal theories to temper the deradicalising and conservative risk of navigating feasibility constrained nonideal strategies. (shrink)

With its recognition of the combined effects of the social categories of race, class and gender intersectionality has risen to the rank of feminism’s most important contribution to date. Though the first intersectional research (American and British) gave visibility to the social locus of women who self-identified as "black" or "of colour", current research goes beyond the confines of the English-speaking world and aims increasingly to develop an intersectional instrument to deal with discrimination. This project gives rise to two kinds (...) of debate: one related to producing intersectional information and to ways of carrying out research in this area, the other to do with the use of this information in the political struggle for equality. The current paper, which is confined to the first debate, attempts to bring out the main tension points in present theorizations of intersectionality. Its objective is twofold: to demonstrate certain limits to the explanatory power of intersectionality, and to suggest ways forward in the light of discussions already in train. In order to do so four points are tackled: intersectionality as a research paradigm, the issue of levels of analysis, the theoretical difference of opinion on the ontological status of categories of difference and the issue of widening the theoretical scope of intersectionality. (shrink)

How can black feminist and women of color feminist theoretical interventions help create frameworks for discerning agentic action in the context of power, oppression, and violence? In this paper, I explore the social dimension of agency and argue that intention is not just authored by the agent as a function of practical reasoning, but is also socially authored through others' discernment and translation of her action. Further, when facilitated by reasoning designed to reinforce and rationalize systems of domination, social authoring (...) systematically distorts the intentions of some agents. Although some theorists have argued that those agents whose intentions are not recognized by others are forced to exercise a diminished agency, I contend that this account obscures agency that is practiced despite or through conditions of oppression. As an alternative, I propose that feminist of color theory that examines the structural and existential erasures of women of color maps a conceptual space to help us better discern agentic action that is practiced by those subjects whose acts are defined away from them. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Ethics at the centre of global and local challenges. For much of the history of the Journal of Business Ethics, ethics was seen within the academy as a peripheral aspect of business. However, in (...) recent years, the stakes have risen dramatically, with global and local worlds destabilized by financial crisis, climate change, internet technologies and artificial intelligence, and global health crises. The authors of these commentaries address these grand challenges by placing business ethics at their centre. What if all grand challenges were framed as grand ethical challenges? Tanusree Jain, Arno Kourula and Suhaib Riaz posit that an ethical lens allows for a humble response, in which those with greater capacity take greater responsibility but remain inclusive and cognizant of different voices and experiences. Focussing on business ethics in connection to the grand challenge of environmental emergencies, Steffen Böhm introduces the deceptively simple yet radical position that business is nature, and nature is business. His quick but profound side-step from arguments against human–nature dualism to an ontological undoing of the business–nature dichotomy should have all business ethics scholars rethinking their “business and society” assumptions. Also, singularly concerned with the climate emergency, Boudewijn de Bruin posits a scenario where, 40 years from now, our field will be evaluated by its ability to have helped humanity emerge from this emergency. He contends that Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell illustrates how human rights take centre stage in climate change litigation, and how business ethics enters the courtroom. From a consumer ethics perspective, Deirdre Shaw, Michal Carrington and Louise Hassan argue that ecologically sustainable and socially just marketplace systems demand cultural change, a reconsideration of future interpretations of “consumer society”, a challenge to the dominant “growth logic” and stimulation of alternative ways to address our consumption needs. Still concerned with global issues, but turning attention to social inequalities, Nelarine Cornelius links the capability approach to global and corporate governance, arguing that CA will continue to lie at the foundation of human development policy, and, increasingly, CSR and corporate governance. Continuing debate on the grand challenges associated with justice and equality, Laurence Romani identifies a significant shift in the centrality of business ethics in debates on managing differences, positing that dialogue between diversity management and international management can ground future debate in business ethics. Finally, the essay concludes with a commentary by Charlotte Karam and Michelle Greenwood on the possibilities of feminist-inspired theories, methods, and positionality for many spheres of business ethics, not least stakeholder theory, to broaden and deepen its capacity for nuance, responsiveness, and transformation. In the words of our commentators, grand challenges must be addressed urgently, and the Journal of Business Ethics should be at the forefront of tackling them. (shrink)

Drawing on 121 in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation women and men physicians of Indian origin in the U.S. Southwest, I examine the incidence and nature of gender-based discrimination in American medicine. I focus on two aspects: gender discrimination by employers and colleagues against women physicians of Indian origin and the interaction of gender discrimination with race in the professional lives of first- and second-generation physicians. U.S. healthcare has become increasingly dependent on immigrants, in particular women physicians, from the developing (...) world. I document the significant impact gender and race can have in molding the professional trajectories of Indian women physicians. The experiences of these physicians help clarify the interaction of skilled migrant workers with racial/ethnic and gender relations in U.S. workplaces. (shrink)

This paper advances a framework to conceptualize societal care-giving arrangements abstractly. It is abstract in that it brackets the meaning of our particular relationships. This framework, which I call “the arrow of care map”, is a descriptive tracking model that is a necessary component of a theory of justice, but it is not a normative prescription in itself. The basic idea of the map is then multiply specifiable to track various ascriptive identity categories as well as different categories of care (...) labor. In this way, the idea of the arrow of care map serves as a conceptual frame within which to begin to understand every human society’s care-giving arrangement. I characterize it as a component of “ideal theory” insofar as it seeks to clarify our values, without the immediate aim of formulating principles to govern a just society. The resultant partial theory of justice is one that responds to non-ideal theory’s critiques of the ideological nature of liberal contractarianism’s idealizations and abstractions while moving towards new visions of a just society. (shrink)

The value of autonomy is a hallmark of liberal doctrine. It would seem to follow that liberals must reject the practice of “arranged marriage” on the grounds that the “arranging” component of the practice eschews autonomy and individuality. However, in policy debates in Great Britain, the difference between “arranged marriage” and “forced marriage” has been defined as the presence of autonomy or free choice for an arranged marriage and their absence in cases of forced marriage. A paradox seems to result: (...) arranged marriage is defined as a marriage practice that both rejects autonomy and requires autonomy. In this article, I will show that the resultant paradox arises from the inadequacy of the autonomy analysis rather than from any intrinsically puzzling feature of arranged marriage. I then offer an alternative normative framework to assess arranged marriage’s potential contribution to a just society. My tri-metric analysis for arranged marriage includes the autonomy of the participants (Metric 1), as well as two societal metrics: the fairness of the distribution of care-giving labor (Metric 2) and the degree to which the society meets its members’ legitimate needs for care (Metric 3). (shrink)

COVID-19 has been called “a disaster for feminism” for numerous reasons. In this short piece, we make sense of this claim, drawing on intersectional feminism to understand why an analysis that considers gender alone is inadequate to address both the risks and consequences of COVID-19.