The leadership of women thought has been one of the topics that did not interest to researchers as other women topics such as Beauty, Equality and Gender. The thought has different value of human activities. It has two parties, personal and subject, and it needs a capacity distinct. The question arises whether human beings different among themselves in the intellectual capacity? This question is discussed in this paper by followup the history of women thinkers, models and their (...) roles to create Arab culture. (shrink)

Despite being a women's problem for a long time, catcalling has recently attracted lawmakers' attention. In 2019, the Philippine government enacted Republic Act 11313, or the Safe Spaces Act, which prohibits and punishes gender-based sexual harassment. However, despite the existence of the law, catcalling continues to be rampant. This study aims to explore the experiences of women in Quezon City who have been subjected to catcalling and to provide answers regarding the effects of catcalling on the victims, the (...) locations where catcalling is most prevalent, the most common perpetrators, and the victim's views on the Safe Spaces Act. This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach. Purposive sampling was used to select respondents, and respondents were interviewed using an interview guide to gather information. The findings indicate that women are most vulnerable to catcalling in public spaces, and the perpetrators are strangers or bystanders. Victims went through mental, emotional, and behavioral changes after the incident. Moreover, not all victims think that the law effectively addresses the problem because catcalling is still prevalent, and public awareness campaigns are lacking. (shrink)

Plato was the first philosopher who gave an account for the highly controversial claim that both genders are principally equal in respect to their talents and abilities. Consequently, one may advocate the thesis that in Plato’s view, the gender differences are rather the outcomes of social, cultural and political influences, than of natural factors. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the meaning and validity of Plato’s arguments for the gender equality in the Republic, which will be supplemented with (...) some important remarks on this same subject-matter from the Laws, in order to find out what social and political implications they have. In doing this, I will argue against some interpretations of prominent Plato scholars who criticize or reject his account of the social role that women should have in Plato’s ideal city. Additionally, I will discuss the claim, advocated by George Vlastos, that Plato is a feminist in a modern sense of the term. (shrink)

This paper provides data on women in academics’ perspective on approaches for enhancing female participation in university’s governance in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. Subjects were 254 women in academics with varying years of teaching experience, from two universities in Calabar. A questionnaire (Academic women perspective on strategies of increasing female participation in university governance questionnaire) was used to gather data from respondents in order to provide answer to the only research question of the study. Subjects were (...) required to outline strategies they considered effective and practicable, for increasing female participation in university governance. Actual numbers, frequencies and percentages were used to present the result. Results indicated that eleven out of the fifteen strategies had a rating of above 70% with strategies listed in items 5,6 and 10 adjudge by the respondents as most effective for increasing women’s capacities and abilities for active involvement in the management of higher education institutions. The study recommended among others that counsellors should focus the advocacy energy on promotion of gender equity by empowering and equipping academic women to take their rightful positions as managers in institutional governance of higher institutions. (shrink)

In this paper the sameness and difference between two distinguished Indian authors, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932) and Mahasweta Devi (b. 1926), representing two generations almost a century apart, will be under analysis in order to trace the generational transformation in women’s writing in India, especially Bengal. Situated in the colonial and postcolonial frames of history, Hossain and Mahasweta Devi may be contextualized differently. At the same time their subjects are also differently categorized; the former is not particularly concerned with (...) subalterns whereas the latter specifically focuses on the effect of race and class on gender. The quest for the ‘self’ and ‘subjectivity’ is more pertinent in the latter and consequently the appeal for agency is based on a crude power struggle. Hossain, a philanthropist who championed the woman question, believed that striving for equality should be a collective process which could be achieved by spreading awareness among fellow-inmates inhabiting the prison of patriarchy. Like Euro-American first-wave feminists, Rokeya advocated the necessity of education among women in order for them to be able to comprehend their plight and ‘awake’ for the cause. She addresses fundamental issues of feminism like education and the systematized claustrophobia within the domestic space. Whereas Mahasweta Devi, has been an activist writer who is regarded as the brand ambassador for the support of the marginalized, deprived and denotified tribes of India. It is her mission to provide succour to the marginalized sections, especially tribes from the Purulia district of West Bengal, like the Kherias and Shabars. As an activist writer she explores tribal life and allied socio-political issues which reflect their agony. (shrink)

This book contributes to the feminist reconstruction of political theory. Although many feminist authors have pointed out the ways in which women have been property, they have been less successful in suggesting how women might become the subjects rather than the objects of property-holding. This book synthesises political theory from liberal, Marxist, Kantian and Hegelian traditions, applying these ideas to history and social policy.

In this paper, I engage with a recent contextualist account of gender terms proposed by Díaz-León, E. 2016. “Woman as a Politically Significant Term: A Solution to the Puzzle.” Hypatia 31 : 245–58. Díaz-León’s main aim is to improve both on previous contextualist and non-contextualist views and solve a certain puzzle for feminists. Central to this task is putting forward a view that allows trans women who did not undergo gender-affirming medical procedures to use the gender terms of their (...) choice to self-identify. My goal is to investigate Díaz-León’s proposal, point out several shortcomings of the view and discuss possible replies on her part. (shrink)

Abstract: In the wide range of issues of violence against women in Arab and Western societies, Professor Brian Sykes wrote about how the future can be without men by looking at the male dominance of Y chromosome on female X chromosome and trying to trace the first forms of male dominance The World To the extent that some geneticists think theoretically that a female ovum is fertilized by an ovum from another female to produce a new human being is (...) of course a female and This method, although it is an abnormal way of thinking to retaliate against a male Y chromosome, expresses a reaction that needs scientific analysis. in the Arab societies, the influence of masculine dominance on the female society has emerged , many forms have taken place. Women are surrounded by a masculine belt that they may not be able to negotiate with them because of ignorance and illiteracy and the spread of some inherited customs and traditions. In addition, other matters that are subject to mutual agreement between the parties and without agreement, with the industrial revolution, women started to work to achieve their own self, then they became involved in education in there society, started to claim some rights , Various women's associations encouraged them, witch allowed women to demand full and undiminished equality between men and women in all fields, And encouraged the abolition of the subordination of children to fathers and the equality of male and female in inheritance until the demand to abolish the upbringing of children in the institutions of the marital common and raising them in communes groups. Or in alternative care institutions while freeing them from the bond of married life and from restricting maternal emotion to be a man's vow and the replacement of artificial reproduction in order to reach their highest point in the equality curve. Although these claims reflect the amount and cruelty of a world Women, however, want the desired equality in this way to be false equality and will not achieve the desired return of stolen rights and did not meet the purpose, but was a call for the continuation of community violence, and although some women in the communities wish to live in a society without men from the abundance of what they have But there is still room for love, tolerance and change, based on the beautiful feelings of women and their feelings and emotions towards men. This study may have been considered as a call to rephrase parenting methods as a preventive method to mitigate future violence against women. The purpose of the study may be to direct and work with new generations alongside current generations involved in daily violence practices and rework to deal with this in a gradual and simple way to alleviate the issues of violence in society. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray's work does not present an obvious resource for projects seeking to reclaim women in the history of philosophy. Indeed, many authors introduce their reclamation project with an argument against conceptions, attributed to Irigaray or “French feminists” more generally, that the feminine is the excluded other of discourse. These authors claim that if the feminine is the excluded other of discourse, then we must conclude that even if women have written philosophy they have not given voice to (...) feminine subjectivity; therefore, reclamation is a futile project. In this essay, I argue against such conclusions. Rather, I argue, Irigaray's work requires that philosophy be transformed through the reclamation of women's writing. She gives us a method of reclamation for the most difficult cases: those in which we have no record of women's writing. Irigaray offers this method through an engagement with the character of Diotima in Plato's Symposium. The method Irigaray demonstrates is reclamation as love. (shrink)

There have been many different historical-intellectual accounts of the shaping and development of concepts of liberty in pre-Enlightenment Europe. This volume is unique for addressing the subject of liberty principally as it is discussed in the writings of women philosophers, and as it is theorized with respect to women and their lives, during this period. The volume covers ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious notions of liberty, with some chapters discussing women's ideas about the metaphysics of free will, (...) and others examining the topic of women's freedom in their moral and personal lives as well as in the public socio-political domain. In some cases, these topics are situated in relation to the emergence of the concept of autonomy in the late eighteenth century, and in others, with respect to recent feminist theorizing about relational autonomy and internalized oppression. Many of the chapters draw upon a wide range of genres, including polemical texts, poetry, plays, and other forms of fiction, as well as standard philosophical treatises. Taken as a whole, this volume shows how crucial it is to recover the too-long forgotten views of female and women-friendly male philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the process of recovering these voices, our understanding of philosophy in the early modern period is not only expanded, but also significantly enhanced, toward a more accurate and gender-inclusive history of our discipline. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in implicit bias. Driving this concern is the thesis, apparently established by tests such as the IAT, that people who hold egalitarian explicit attitudes and beliefs, are often influenced by implicit mental processes that operate independently from, and are largely insensitive to, their explicit attitudes. We argue that implicit bias testing in social and empirical psychology does not, and without a fundamental shift in focus could not, establish this startling thesis. We suggest (...) that implicit bias research has been conducted in light of inadequate theories of racism and sexism. As a result, such testing has not sufficiently controlled for subjects’ prejudiced explicit beliefs and emotions, and has not ruled out the possibility that explicit prejudice best explains test subjects’ discriminatory associations and behavior. (shrink)

The article by MacKay and Saylor (2020) claims that the principle of fair subject selection yields conflicting imperatives (e.g. in the case of pregnant women) and should be understood as “a bundle of four distinct sub-principles” (i.e. fair inclusion, burden sharing, opportunity, distribution of third-party risks), each having conflicting normative recommendations (MacKay and Saylor 2020). The authors also offer guidance as to how we should navigate between subprinciples that may conflict with each other. The problem is a crucial one (...) since fair subject selection is one of the principles regulating clinical research that produces generalizable knowledge with the potential of improving people’s health. Therefore, there may be cases where the way in which participants are selected directly influences the generalizability (or its lack) of the clinically relevant knowledge and its value (if any) to different groups. In my commentary article, written from the philosophical perspective, I notice a number of interrelated problems which I believe have not been discussed thoroughly in the target article: (1) the precise way in which health care priority setting should influence the content of health research priority setting and fair inclusion principles; (2) the distinction between group and individual benefits and burdens from clinical research; (3) the reference class problem in medical research. (shrink)

Cartesian and Western religious and philosophical traditions distinguish the body from the mind, viewing the former as a prison or a burden. The mind (spirit, soul, rationality) is identified as good, while the body is devalued and associated with evil. Some philosophers restored the body's value: humans are not imprisoned spirits, but they are their bodies. Husserl, for example, claims that human beings are not an immaterial substance in a Körper, a physical body, but Leib, a living body that solves (...) within itself the two Cartesian res. Although the Cartesian legacy survives in the Existentialism in the distinction between In-itself (the passive Being) and For-itself (the human, transcendental freedom), the second does not use the object-body as the res cogitans did: "the very nature of the For-itself demands that it be body." Nevertheless, the body plays an ambivalent role, suspended between Körper's passivity and Leib's transcendence. The chapter's focus on Arkham's female characters is not random. Leder notices that "women have consistently been associated with the bodily sphere. They have been linked with nature, sexuality, and the passions, whereas men have been identified with the rational mind. This equation implicitly legitimizes structures of domination." By associating human categories like "lunatics," "savages," or women with the immanence of the body and nature, their transcendentality is denied, and, simultaneously, men's control and domination over them is justified. (shrink)

Professional sport like most human activities undertaken for pay is subject to Article 23(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“Equal Pay for Equal Work”). An athlete’s ‘work’ can be variously construed, however, as entertainment/profit generation, athletic performance, or effort. Feminist arguments for gender wage parity in professional sport based on the former two construals rely on counterfactual assumptions, given that most actual audiences and performances of athletes identifying as female do not (currently) equal those of athletes identifying as (...) male. But both philosophical and scientific accounts of the truth-conditions of counterfactual conditionals of the form ‘If conditions X obtained, then the entertainment value/performance of female athletes would equal that of male athletes’ remain uncertain. Construing athletic ‘work’ as effort, on the other hand, ties remuneration to a quasi-unobservable quantity, with paradoxical outcomes when varying levels of athletic or social disadvantage are taken into account. Appeal to procedural justice, finally, does not yield wage equality unless we make the same counterfactual assumptions, or postulate a right to equal remuneration on unrelated grounds of substantive justice. On either of these approaches, the case for gender wage parity in professional sport requires strengthening. (shrink)

The recent spectacular progress in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) has resulted in new ethical dilemmas. Though women occupy a central role in the reproductive process, within the ART paradigm, the importance accorded to the embryo commonly surpasses that given to the mother. This commentary questions the increasing tendency to position the embryonic subject in an antagonistic relation with the mother. I examine how the mother’s reproductive autonomy is compromised in relation to that of her embryo and argue in favour (...) of doing away with the subject-object dyad between them, particularly in the contexts of surrogacy and abortion. I also engage with the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016. A critical discussion of the privacy judgment passed by the Supreme Court of India helps examine how personal autonomy of the body and mind extends to include the reproductive autonomy of women as well. (shrink)

The author interprets three stories from recently Neolithic cultures (Melanesian, African Bushman, and Inuit) and a fourth story from an oral tradition of Haitian women. All four are about women and perhaps, judging by their content, composed by women. The author trained with Edward Whitmont and developed his interpretation technique in decades of practice with dreams as a Jungian analyst. He adds a new tool, the use of repetition, in which the same point is made by a (...) series of different details. Repetition provides an internal test for the accuracy of an interpretation. The author updates Jung’s concept of archetypes to incorporate an understanding of Darwinian evolution (which Jung lacked), new knowledge of the function of genes, and new knowledge of the emergence of complexity in dynamic and adaptive systems. He compares his interpretations of the four stories with other scholars’ interpretations, in particular the extraordinary work of Michael Wessels on African Bushman legends. Though Wessels criticized Jung for imposing his ‘colonial’ theory of universal archetypes, both Jung and Wessels insisted that interpretation requires a dialogue between two agents in which both are subjects, neither being dominated or objectified. In the four stories, the author shows, symbolic consciousness began with women. The anthropologist Chris Knight proposed something similar in 1991 in his controversial book Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture. (shrink)

Ashapurna Devi, a prominent Bengali woman novelist (1909–1995) focused on women’s creativity and enlightenment during the colonial and postcolonial period in Bengal, India. She herself displayed immense will power, tenacity and an indomitable spirit which enabled her to eke out a prominent place for herself in the world of creative writing. Her life spanned both colonial India and independent India and these diverse experiences shaped her mind and persona and helped her to portray the emerging face of the enlightened (...) Bengali middle-class woman. Her writings trace the evolution of the Bengali woman as an enlightened and empowered individual struggling against the shackles of discriminatory norms imposed upon her by society. She traces the extremely conservative upbringing that the female members of her generation were subjected to and goes on to show how different individuals responded to these structures in different ways. Some would comply unquestioningly, some would comply simply because they did not dare to protest, while others would break free and find their own niche in the outside world. These issues are addressed by Ashapurna Devi in many short stories as well, but a critical analysis of her trilogy Pratham Pratisruti (1964), Subarnalata (1967) and Bokulkatha (1974) enables us to experience this struggle against a gradually unfolding backdrop where India moves on from being a British colony to an independent country. The trilogy traces the life of three generations of a family — Satyabati, Subarna and finally Bokul and establishes Ashapurna Devi as a path-breaking champion of women’s emancipation in an era when such endeavours were few and far between. (shrink)

Karl Marx claims that alienation inheres in all wage labor. I raise questions about the applicability of this claim to subjects of patriarchy. In the first section, I discuss industrial wage labor and its allure for women who were trying to escape the norms of familial patriarchy. In the second section, I extend this criticism of Marx’s claim by considering the racially enslaved subjects of the Antebellum American South, for whom economicallyrecognized wage labor was still a bloody political battle. (...) Finally, I turn to the identification of working class women and sexuality, in order to show how wage labor offered liberation from narrow bourgeois sexual strictures. I conclude by reassessing the viability of Marx’s critique of alienation, taking into account the standpoints from which wage labor itself was a considerable political achievement. (shrink)

[Attached PDF is the Arabic translation, the hyperlink takes you to the original English version] In this paper I argue that the emphasis, which was placed by the PAIGC’s leadership, and specifically by Amílcar Cabral, on the importance of advancing women’s rights and women’s liberation should be understood as being a consequence of Cabral’s modernist philosophical orientation. Moreover, I argue that women played an essential part in the struggle for liberation from Portuguese colonialism. In the first section, (...) I characterize Cabral’s modernist philosophical orientation and the way it influenced his views on the necessity of women’s liberation. I emphasize the philosophical commitment to autonomy as a guiding normative principle. In the second section, I argue that women played a key role in pressuring the PAIGC to integrate them into its structure, i.e., they were active agents and not just passive subjects waiting for somebody to “liberate them.” In the third and concluding section, I describe the limits of the PAIGC’s commitment to women’s liberation, and I discuss why some members of the party’s leadership (e.g., Luis Cabral) disagreed with Amílcar Cabral regarding the importance of women’s liberation. This paper thus approaches the question of feminist anti-colonial imaginaries both from the perspective of the hopes which attended a partially feminist-inflected African liberation struggle, as well the betrayal of these hopes by men in leadership positions. Those leaders never took seriously the idea that the liberation of women was a necessary condition for the creation of a social environment which would allow for the full actualization of the capacities of men and women in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. (shrink)

When Mill published The Subjection of Women in 1869 he wanted to replace the domination of one sex by the other laws based on ‘a principle of perfect equality’. It is widely complained, however, that even advanced countries have still failed to achieve equality between the sexes. Power and wealth and influence are still overwhelmingly in the hands of men. But equalities of these kinds are not the ones required by the principle of equality that Mill had in (...) mind; and, furthermore, a principle that demanded them would actually be incompatible with Mill’s. The conclusion is not, however, that social policies dealing with men and women are all they should be. It is just that although the fundamental problems of feminism could be – and to a considerable extent still can be – expressed in terms of requirements for justice and equality, we have now reached a stage where concentrating on these ideas can distort the real problems, and may actually impede the kind of progress that is needed. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of emotion focuses on challenging dualistic conceptualizations. Three of the most obvious dualisms are the following: 1. emotion opposes reason; 2. emotion is subjective, while reason is objective; 3. emotion lies internal to the subject, while reason is external. With challenges to these dualisms, one of the more interesting questions that has surfaced is the idea of emotional appropriateness in a particular context. Here, consider a widely held belief in the United States associates racialized groups (...) with specific emotions—most notably African American women with anger. Clearly these emotional attributions are essentialistic--and hence racist. But this response is too easy. The acknowledgement that emotion lies both internally in the subject and externally in the world opens the possibility of attributing an emotional temperament to a population group. Yet if an identity group has an emotional temperament, can they be accountable for emotionally appropriate behavior? (shrink)

Rawls saw need for non-ideal theory also within society but never developed that project. In this chapter, Card suggests that the non-ideal part of Rawls’ Law of Peoples can be a resource for thinking about responding to evils when the subject is not state-centered. It is plausible that defense against great evils other than those of aggressive states should be governed by analogues of scruples that Rawlsian well-ordered societies observe in defending themselves against outlaw states. This essay explores those hypotheses (...) in relation to women’s self-defense and mutual defense against evils of misogyny, the term feminists apply to the most deeply hostile environments of and attitudes toward women and girls and to the cruelest wrongs to them/us, regardless whether perpetrators harbor feelings of hatred. It extrapolates and adapts to this case values, concepts, and methods from Rawls’s life’s work, especially his writing on war. (shrink)

My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also (...) at stake. I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)

This chapter discusses (in German) John Stuart Mill's position on paternalism and how it relates to his book 'The Subjection of Women'. It is argued that Mill's claim (in On Liberty) that one should not be allowed to sell oneself into slavery is making reference to the Victorian marriage contract through which women essentially become slaves of their husbands. As argued in Subjection, women do not freely develop the desire to get married, the social circumstances (...) do not leave them any other options. Necessarily unaware of what married life is like, the decision to get married is like crossing an unsafe bridge without knowing it is unsafe. It is not paternalist, as Mill argues, to alert them to the condition of the bridge and put them in the position to decide for themselves whether they want to cross it (or turn back half way, e.g. by divorcing). (shrink)

BACKGROUND: -/- In its recent report 'Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law', the House of Commons' Select Committee on Science and Technology called for greater efforts to establish the potential demographic impact of sex selection across all sectors of UK society. Given the well-known preference for boys over girls among some communities, there is concern that a readily available service for social sex selection may upset the balance of the sexes. Of particular interest are the gender preferences and the demand (...) for sex selection among Pakistanis. METHODS: -/- We conducted a social survey on gender preferences and potential demand for preconception sex selection among 301 pregnant women in Karachi, Pakistan, using a self-report questionnaire consisting of 14 questions. RESULTS: -/- About 41.5% wish to have a family with an equal number of boys and girls; 3.3% would like to have only boys, 1.0% only girls, 27.6% more boys than girls and 4.3% more girls than boys, and 22.3% stated that they do not care about the sex composition of their family. Whereas 6.3% could imagine employing cytometric sperm separation for social sex selection, 76.1% could not and 17.6% were undecided. About 27.2% felt that social sex selection ought to be legal, 48.8% thought it ought to be illegal and 23.9% were undecided. CONCLUSIONS: -/- Although Pakistani women do show a statistically significant preference for boys over girls, the number of women willing to subject themselves to cytometric sperm separation appears to be too small to cause a severe imbalance of the sexes. However, further research among British citizens of Pakistani origin is needed to establish whether sex selection poses a serious threat to the sex ratio of UK communities. (shrink)

We live in an age of evidence-based healthcare, where the concept of evidence has been avidly and often uncritically embraced as a symbol of legitimacy, truth, and justice. By letting the evidence dictate healthcare decision making from the bedside to the policy level, the normative claims that inform decision making appear to be negotiated fairly—without subjectivity, prejudice, or bias. Thus, the term ‘‘evidence-based’’ is typically read in the health sciences as the empirically adequate standard of reasonable practice and a means (...) for increasing certainty. Supporters believe that evidence-based medicine (EBM) can introduce rational order to the deliberative processes of healthcare decision making. It is perhaps puzzling, then, to come across critical perspectives (typically arising from the humanities and the more theory-driven social sciences) raising concerns about a seeming technogovernance being introduced by this deferral to the evidence where power interests can be obfuscated by way of technical resolve. The critics holding this minority view argue that technological solutions to problems of knowledge and practice cannot replace medicine’s normative content. Against EBM’s democratic leanings toward transparency and accountability, medical criteria alone cannot decide valueladen ethically charged decisions. This paper attempts to explain and evaluate this important debate in the philosophy of medicine, focusing specifically on the dispute over 'evidence-based women's health'. (shrink)

Homi Bhabha brings attention to the figure of the postcolonial metropolitan subject—a third world subject who resides in the first world. Bhabha describes the experiences of the “colonial” subject as ambivalently split. As much as his work is insightful, Bhabha's descriptions of the daily life of postcolonial metropolitan subjects as split and doubled is problematic. His analysis lends only to the possibility of these splittings/doublings as schizophrenically wholly arising. His analysis cannot account for the agonistic moments when the colonial subject (...) is caught in not knowing, and in developing understanding about present circumstances. A framework with an account of context and horizons, such as in phenomenology, can better depict the experiences of the postcolonial metropolitan subject. Maurice Merleau-Ponty follows a gestaltian contact with the world, which advances that the “most basic unit of experience is that of figure-on-a-background.” One perceives the figure/theme because of and within the background/horizon. In this horizonal framework, human experiences are ambiguously open. The openness in the horizon of the gestaltian framework better accounts for the conditions Bhabha refers to as splitting. The ambivalence can be understood not simply as conundrums that defy understanding but as ambiguous moments for expanding, developing, and growing. (shrink)

A ‘should’ question normally signals work for an ethicist but this ethicist’s task is complicated by the normative dimension of all the chapters in this volume. Each author was asked to come up with three recommendations from their own subject area – ’should’ statements deriving from the ‘is’ analysis that they present. If those prescriptions cover the relevant topics, what more is there for an ethicist to do? I have had a personal interest in obstetricians’ relationship with ‘older women’ (...) since being classified as an ‘elderly primigravida’ at the superannuated age of 26 years. Apart from that, however, what original contribution can I make? The convenors of the 56th RCOG Study Group gave me plentiful suggestions – perhaps a little too plentiful: How should the RCOG approach its constituencies, medical ethics, regulation and its relationship to government and the rest of the medical profession, i.e. the NHS and the market, vested interests, individuals or consumers, families, the unborn, doctors, drug companies, surrogacy, the unborn, trafficking, global adoption, law, research? I have to admit this was just too much for me. Instead, I want to argue for what may seem a self-evidently simple point. The RCOG describes its mission as ‘setting standards to improve women’s health’ – presumably all women. In the 6 years that I have served on the RCOG Ethics Committee, however, we have almost always been concerned with that minority of the female population who are of reproductive age. (shrink)

In the context of the perpetual reproduction of consumerism in contemporary western societies, the varied and often contradictory principles of third wave feminism have been misunderstood or redefined by the dominant economic discourse of the markets. The lack of homogeneity in the theoretical debates of the third wave feminism seems to be a vulnerable point in the appropriation of its emancipatory ideals by the post-modern consumerist narratives. The beauty norm, particularly, brings the most problematic questions forth in the contemporary feminist (...) dialogues. In this paper I will examine the validity of the concept of empowerment through practices of the body, practices that constitute the socially legitimized identity of women in a consumerist western society. My thesis is that the beauty norm is constructed as a socio-political instrument in order to preserve the old, patriarchal regulation of women’s bodies. Due to the power of invisibility of the new mechanisms of social control and subjection, the consumerist discourse offers the most effective political tool for gender inequality and a complex discussion about free will and emancipation in third wave feminism debates. This delicate theoretical issues question not only the existent social order, but the very political purposes of contemporary feminism. (shrink)

This paper explores some surprising historical connections between philosophy and pornography (including pornography written by or about philosophers, and works that are both philosophical and pornographic). Examples discussed include Diderot's Les Bijoux Indiscrets, Argens's Therésè Philosophe, Aretino's Ragionamenti, Andeli's Lai d'Aristote, and the Gor novels of John Norman. It observes that these works frequently dramatize a tension between reason and emotion, and argues that their existence poses a problem for philosophical arguments against pornography.

Images abound of women throughout the ages engaging in various activities. But why are there so few representations of childbirth in visual art? Feminist artist Judy Chicago once suggested that depictions of women giving birth do not commonly occur in Western culture but can be found in other contexts such as pre-Columbian art or societies previously considered "primitive." Chicago's own exploration of the theme resulted in the creation of The Birth Project (1980-85): an unprecedented series of eighty handcrafted (...) works of art created in a variety of needlework techniques by more than 130 artisans that celebrate the experience of birth and a woman's transformation into motherhood. But why is The Birth Project an aberration from today's norm? What are the reasons that childbirth remains a taboo subject in our visual culture? Why is the birthing experience--so pervasive for women--so infrequently celebrated, even by female artists? (shrink)

Plato is among the most influential philosophers in the course of history, and the range of his ideas about different issues makes other scholars impressed. Considering his various views on varied subjects, one can argue that many ideas of the thinkers originated from Plato’s ideas in the contemporary world. Plato, in different positions, discussed women and their equality with men, especially in Republic Book V. The study of the ideas makes one suppose that the book explores the roots of (...) feminist theory. In Book V, Plato deals with the equality of women and men related to learning different issues and positions. Besides, he has discussed the children-sharing system resulting in the elimination of the private family system. Plato’s opinions are highly disputed; on the one hand, his ideas are considered feminist, and on the other hand, however, they are seen with no relation to feminist philosophy. The present paper aims to judge opinions related to women in the Republic Book V. -/- . (shrink)

The book, ‘The Crisis of World and Krishna Pure Monism: A Long Essay’, is more a cathartics of the crisis of world as viewed from the plane of Krishna pure monism than critique of hither to development of idea and philosophy. It sees a correlation of the crisis of world in praxis of objectification of subject, undermining of the knowledge and violation of Krishna pure monism-one has become all and inherence of knowledge. If objectification of subject is juxtaposed with resultant (...) objectification of women, nature, ‘other’, knowledge and idea or Reason or Dharma, it would certainly validate the hypothesis of the essay. The main hypothesis of the essay is as to how objectification of subject on the plane of sciencitization of philosophy and violation of Krishna pure monism-one has become all and inherent knowledge and , and its subversion by muses have led to the crisis of world. The objectification of subject or consciousness or spirit in sciences seems to be cause and effect of objectification of the Woman, Nature, Other, Knowledge and Reason or Idea or Dharma. When one has become all or creator has become creation, the plurality and difference is transitory which appear to have been assigned the permanent value. The transitory value has been given permanence, while the permanent has been dislodged from discourse, conveniently tucked to the abstract. This seems to be real narrative of the crisis of the world. -/- . (shrink)

Development of the world economy bears numerous negative phenomena, and require constant need to rebalance socioeconomic interests of nations, transnational subjects, and individuals. Socialisation is an important and effective tool for balancing social and individual; however, despite socialisation is evolving rapidly, its scientific and practical potential is not duly uncovered. In the article theoretical and methodological foundations of socialisation of economy is surveyed in the context of globalisation, and etymology, explanations, scope, historical phases of development, theoretical aspects and practical forms (...) of use, consequences and prospects are analysed. The term «socialisation» was determined as a multidisciplinary, used in many scientific fields, increasingly involving various areas of research and is understood as inclusion, adaptation and development of human being in society. It was determined that the economy socialisation is implemented in different fields and semantic structures, contains a large number of methodological tools, is involved at all management levels, and is primarily identified with the increasing role of social component in the life of human resources. The assumptions were made about the future transformation of this category in line with the identified predictive trends. (shrink)

Pregnant women and persons engaging in homosexual practices compose two groups that have been and still are amongst those most severely subjected to coercive restrictions regarding their own bodies. From an historical point of view, it is a recent and rare phenomenon that a woman’s right to abortion and a person’s right to engage in homosexual interactions are recognized. Although most Western liberal states currently do recognize these rights, they are under continuous assault from various political and religious movements. (...) Moreover, though liberal theories of justice typically defend women’s rights to abortion and people’s rights to homosexual activity, these theories often struggle to capture the fundamental ground for these rights. For example, it appears hard for the liberal to say why and when only the woman and not the embryo/fetus has rights and why the right to certain sexual practices is not on par with rights to other preferences. Contemporary liberal theories of justice, therefore, have a hard time identifying what distinguishes questions of abortion and sexual activities from other questions of right and thereby also have difficulty capturing the gravity of the wrongdoing involved in coercively restricting homosexual interactions and abortion as such. I argue that Kant’s theory of justice succeeds on both counts, because it can locate the fundamental ground for these rights in an understanding of the bodily integrity of the person. Just states will neither permit nor outlaw all abortions or sexual interactions, but rather will require all such laws to be reconcilable with the protection of each person’s right to freedom. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that there is an essential difference between social intelligence and creative intelligence, and that they have their foundation in human sexuality. For sex differences, we refer to the vast psychological, neurological, and cognitive science research where problem-solving, verbal skills, logical reasoning, and other topics are dealt with. Intelligence tests suggest that, on average, neither sex has more general intelligence than the other. Though people are equals in general intelligence, they are different in special forms of (...) intelligence such as social intelligence and creative intelligence, the former dominant in women, the latter dominant in men. The dominance of creative intelligence in men needs to be explained. The focus of our research is on the strictly anthropological aspects, and consequently our explanation for this fact is based on the male-female polarity in the mating systems. Sexual dimorphism does not only regard bodily differences but implies different forms of sex life. Sex researchers distinguish between two levels of sexual intercourse: procreative sex and recreational sex, and to these we would add “creative sex.” On all three levels, there is a behavioral difference between men and women, including the subjective experience. These differences are as well attributed to culture as genetically founded in nature. Sexual reproduction is only possible if females cooperate. Their biological inheritance makes females play a decisive role in mate choice. Recreational sex for the purpose of pleasure rather than reproduction results from female extended sexual activity. Creative sex, on the contrary, is a specifically male performance of sexuality. We identify creative sex with eroticism. Eroticism evolved through the transformation of the sexual drive into a mental state of expectation and fantasizing. Hence, sex differences (that nowadays are covered up by cultural egalitarianism) continue to be the evolutionary origin of the difference between social and creative intelligence. (shrink)

Contextualist accounts of “woman,” including Saul (2012), Diaz-Leon (2016), and Ichikawa (2020), aim to capture the variability of the meaning of the term, and do justice to the rights of trans women. I argue that (i) there is an internal tension between a contextualist stance and the commitment to trans-inclusive language, and that (ii) we should recognize and tackle the broader and deeper theoretical and practical difficulties implicit in the semantic debates, rather than collapsing them all into semantics. Moving (...) on, I sketch three strategies to help us advance feminist philosophical endeavors, including how attending to contextual matters can lead us to further reflect on the meta-contextual, such as our role in shaping contexts and whether the working of language is indicative of a larger oppressive social structure. (shrink)

Feelings of belonging are integral in people’s choice of what career to pursue. Women and men are disproportionately represented across careers, starting with academic training. The present research focuses on two fields that are similar in their history and subject matter but feature inverse gender gaps—psychology (more women than men) and philosophy (more men than women)—to investigate how theorized explanations for academic gender gaps contribute to feelings of belonging. Specifically, we simultaneously model the relative contribution of theoretically (...) relevant individual differences (empathizing, systematizing, and intellectual combativeness) as well as life goals (prioritization of family, money, and status) to feelings of belonging and majoring in psychology or philosophy. We find that men report higher intellectual combativeness than women, and intellectual combativeness predicts feelings of belonging and majoring in philosophy over psychology. Although systematizing and empathizing are predictive of belonging and, in turn, majoring in psychology and philosophy, respectively, when other factors are taken into account, women and men do not differ in empathizing and systematizing. Women, more than men, report prioritizing having a family, wealth, and status in choosing a career, and these directly or indirectly feed into feelings of belonging and majoring in psychology, in contrast to prior theory. Together, these findings suggest that students’ perceptions of their own combativeness and the extent to which they desire money and status play essential roles in women’s feeling they belong in psychology and men’s feeling they belong in philosophy. (shrink)

Subjects of ectogenesis—human beings that are developing in artificial wombs (AWs)—share the same moral status as newborns. To demonstrate this, I defend two claims. First, subjects of partial ectogenesis—those that develop in utero for a time before being transferred to AWs—are newborns (in the full sense of the word). Second, subjects of complete ectogenesis—those who develop in AWs entirely—share the same moral status as newborns. To defend the first claim, I rely on Elizabeth Chloe Romanis’s distinctions between fetuses, newborns and (...) subjects of ectogenesis. For Romanis, the subject of partial ectogenesis ‘is neither a fetus nor a baby’ but is, instead, a ‘new product of human reproduction’. In this essay, I begin by, expanding upon Romanis’s argument that subjects of partial ectogenesis are not fetuses while arguing that those subjects are newborns. Next, I show that the distinction that Romanis draws between subjects of partial ectogenesis and newborns needs to be revised. The former is a kind of the latter. This leads us to an argument that shows why different moral statuses cannot be justifiably assigned to subjects of partial ectogenesis and subjects of complete ectogenesis, respectively. As subjects of partial ectogenesis share the same moral status as newborns, it follows that subjects of complete ectogenesis share the same moral status as newborns as well. I conclude by considering implications that this essay may have for the research and development of AW technology and conceptual links between a subject’s moral status and birth. (shrink)

The precondition of any feminist politics – a usable category of ‘woman’ – has proved to be difficult to construct, even proposed to be impossible, given the ‘problem of exclusion’. This is the inevitable exclusion of at least some women, as their lives or experiences do not fit into the necessary and sufficient condition(s) that denotes group membership. In this paper, I propose that the problem of exclusion arises not because of inappropriate category membership criteria, but because of the (...) presumption that categories can only be organised by identity relations or shared properties among their members. This criterion of sameness as well as the characterisation of this exclusion as essentialism attests to a metaphysics that is not conducive to resistance and liberatory projects. Following a strain of hybrid thinking in feminist and post-colonial theory, I outline an alternative pluralist logic that confronts oppressive binaries that impede theory work in gender, sexuality, and race theory, and limit political action and resistance. The problem of exclusion is neither irresolvable nor is it essentialism. Instead it is a denial of subjectivity due to pseudodualistic self/Other dichotomies that can be resisted by adopting a new categorial logic. While this paper focuses on the specific problem of formulating a category of ‘woman’, it has implications for other areas of gender, critical race, and postcolonial theory. Rather than working toward an inclusive category founded on sameness, theorists need to develop independent and positive categories grounded in difference. Our current categorial logic does not permit such a project, and therefore a new metaphysics must be adopted. (shrink)

In this existential reading of Kim Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie of 2016, I focus on the rise of selfie culture and public discourse around emerging digital representations of women's bodies. The selfie is a relatively new phenomenon, and is particularly curious because of the subject/object paradox it creates; in taking a selfie, a person asserts control over their own image, but at the same time, becomes object in their own gaze. My argument is that selfies, like other (...) assertions of bodily subjectivity in digital spaces, are a threat to patriarchal structures that paint women as immanent, object, as reflected in public discourse around Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie. I draw on both Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's work on subjectivity in existentialism and phenomenology, as well as Amy Shields Dobson's work on post-feminism and young women's projections of self, in order to delineate what it is about the selfie that creates this paradox. I also make reference to the work of Elisabeth Grosz and Frantz Fanon in relation to a colonial hierarchy that prioritises body over mind, as well as Laura Mulvey's work on the male gaze. (shrink)

The present book, “Rights of Depressed Classes: A Constitutional Approach “is the fourth e-book of the Centre which includes the essence of the occasional papers presented in several seminars. Human Rights is one of the majors subjects for discussion in academics as well as in social sector and has an international approach to social issues and problems. The struggle to promote, protect and preserve human rights changes and holds continuity in every generation in our society. The concept and practice of (...) human rights is the hallmark of any modern society. Marginalized Groups of India includes SCs/STs, Women and Children etc. The Constitution of India provides equal rights to all its citizens’ right to live with equality, honour and dignity. But the caste system and untouchability somehow and others are still playing negative roles from different parts of the society. Talhan, Meham, Dulina, Gohana, Saalwan, Chakwada, Khairlanji, Khandamal and Mirchpur are some of the recent instances of atrocities against Dalits in India. Atrocities against Dalits thus continue to exist even today, despite constitutional safeguards, and various legislative measures. Empowerment is the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desires actions and outcomes. (shrink)

Aristotle is a political scientist and a student of biology. Political science, in his view, is concerned with the human good and thus it includes the study of ethics. He approaches many subjects from the perspective of both political science and biology: the virtues, the function of humans, and the political nature of humans. In light of the overlap between the two disciplines, I look at whether or not Aristotle’s views in biology influence or explain some of his theses in (...) political science. I show that we should not seek a unified answer to this question, for the relationship between the two disciplines varies depending on the topic. In some cases, e.g. the nature of the human function, the biological background is likely to be endorsed as one of the presuppositions of the ethical enquiry. In other cases, e.g. the study of social hierarchies, even though the ethical works and the biological works come to similar conclusions, it is hard to establish that the biological approach is intended to provide support to the ethico-political approach. In conclusion, I show that Aristotle’s political science and his biology are in conflict at least in two important cases: his account of justice towards non-human animals and his exhortation to contemplate. (shrink)

This paper summarizes recent and ongoing experimental work regarding the reality, nature, effects, and causes of the underrepresentation of women in academic philosophy. We first present empirical data on several aspects of underrepresentation, and then consider various reasons why this gender imbalance is problematic. We then turn to the published and preliminary results of empirical work aimed at identifying factors that might explain it.

Szmimary.—The present report investigated the question of how individual differences in self-consciousness devdop. Rimé and LeBon proposed that high self-consciousness follows a history of frequent exposure to selffocusing stimuli, i.e., mirrors, audiences, audio and video devices, and cameras. To explore this hypothesis private and public self-consciousness and past exposure to self-focusing stimuli were assessed in 438 subjects. Analysis indicated that history of frequent exposure to self-focusing stimuli is significantly but weakly related to high private self-consciousness in men and to high (...) public self-consciousness in women. This supports previous observations suggesting that the routes to the development of selfconsciousness seem to differ for the two sexes. (shrink)

Little is know about factors that influence the development of public self-consciousness. One potential factor is exposure to audiences: being repeatedly aware of one's object status could create a high disposition to focus on public self-aspects. To explore this hypothesis public self-consciousness was assessed in two groups of subjects: 62 professors and actors (high exposure to audiences) and 39 people without audience experience. Analysis show that significant differences exist for public self-consciousness in men only. Also, history of frequent exposure to (...) audience is significantly but weakly correlated with high public self-consciousness in men. This supports previous observations indicating that self-consciousness seems to develop differently for men and women. (shrink)

Irigaray’s engagement with Aristotelian physics provides a specific diagnosis of women’s ontological and ethical situation under Western metaphysics: Women provide place and containership to men, but have no place of their own, rendering them uncontained and abyssal. She calls for a reconfiguration of this topological imaginary as a precondition for an ethics of sexual difference. This paper returns to Aristotelian cosmological texts to further investigate the topologies of sexual difference suggested there. In an analysis both psychoanalytic and phenomenological, (...) the paper rigorously traces a teleological and oedipal narrative implicit in the structure of the Aristotelian cosmos, in which desire for the mother is superseded by love for the father. Further, the paper argues that this narrative is complicated by certain other elements in the Aristotelian text—aporias involving the notion of boundary and the relationship between space and time, the fallenness of the feminine, and the ineliminably aleatory qualities of matter. The paper concludes that such elements may provide material for disrupting this teleology of gender, opening onto not merely an ethics of sexual difference, but providing space and place for a proliferation of non-normative, queer, transgender and intersex modes of sexed and gendered subjectivity. (shrink)

This chapter introduces and discusses the concepts that are in-depth articulated in the volume. International migration is presented here as a test bench where the normative limits of institutional order, its contradictions and internal tensions are examined. Migrations allows to call into question classical political categories and models. Pointing at walls and fences as tools that reproduce enormous inequalities within the globalized neo-liberal system, this chapter presents the conceptual tensions and contradictions between migration policies and global justice. We challenge the (...) conceptualization of justice as a relationship between citizens of the same country and the State and argue that, in our globalized world, nation-state cannot constitute the basic unit of the theories of justice. We argue that an integral approach that includes the complex and interconnected forms of structural inequalities and transcends the borders of national sovereign states is required. Avoiding the methodological nationalism and the exclusionary biases that inform current migration and border control policies, this chapter finally places attention on the most marginalized subjects of the migration chain: migrant women workers. We point out the importance of addressing transnational structural inequalities and bringing social reproduction to the center of global justice theories. (shrink)

Introduction: Over the past twenty-five years the sporting body has been studied in a myriad of ways including via a range of feminist frameworks (Hall 1996; Lowe 1998; Markula 2003; George 2005; Hargreaves 2007) and gender-sensitive lenses (e.g. McKay 1994; Aoki 1996; Woodward 2008). Despite this developing corpus, studies of sport only rarely engage in depth with the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting and exercizing body (Wainwright and Turner 2003; Allen-Collinson 2009) at least from a phenomenological angle, and in relation (...) to female embodiment. It seems that a more corporeally-grounded, phenomenological perspective on women’s sporting embodiment would be a welcome addition to extant studies. In this chapter I suggest that employing a feminist phenomenological framework can provide a powerful lens through which to explore the subjective, richly-textured, lived-body experiences of sport and exercise. Phenomenology of course offers only one of a multiplicity of avenues to investigate the body in sport, and this chapter provides just a small glimpse of its possibilities. To-date studies of sporting experience employing a phenomenological theoretical framework remain surprisingly under-developed (Kerry and Armour 2000), as do those using its ethnomethodological offspring (Coates 1999; Burke et al. 2008). Further, as Fisher (2000) notes, the significance of the interaction between phenomenology and feminism has only relatively recently begun to be explored. It seems timely, therefore, to address this intriguing, potentially productive, but sometimes uneasy nexus, focusing upon female running embodiment in this case. (shrink)