Resistance and backlash to gender equality

Resistance to efforts to advance gender equality is a commonfeature of social life, whether in workplaces and otherorganisations or elsewhere. In this article, we review thetypical character, dynamics of and contexts for resistanceto gender equality measures. Resistance is an inevitable,although undesirable, response to efforts at progressivesocial change. Backlash and resistance to gender equalitytake common forms including: denial of the problem, disavowalof responsibility, inaction, appeasement, co-optionand repression. Resistance may be individual or collective,formal or informal. Pushback against gender equality measurescomes more often from members of the privilegedgroup (men) than the disadvantaged group (women). Resistanceis a predictable expression of the defence of institutionalisedprivilege, but it is also shaped by widespreaddiscourses on “sex roles” and “post-feminism,” the methodsadopted to advance gender equality and the contexts inwhich they take place. Understanding the character anddynamics of resistance and backlash is vital for preventingand reducing them

Special Edition: Fighting Feminism – Organised Opposition to Women’s Rights; Guest Editors’ Introduction

<p>This special issue presents a series of papers by scholars who participated in a workshop entitled ‘Men's Groups: Challenging Feminism’, which was held at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, 26-27 May 2014. The workshop was organised by Susan B Boyd, Professor of Law and Chair in Feminist Legal Studies at the UBC Faculty of Law, and was sponsored by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC, the Peter A Allard School of Law, the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at UBC, and the <em>Canadian Journal of Women and the Law</em>. The aim of the workshop was to bring together feminist scholars from multiple disciplines and multiple national contexts to explore a source of resistance to feminism that has been largely overlooked in scholarly research: the growing number of nationally situated and globally linked organisations acting in the name of men's rights and interests which contend that men are discriminated against in law, education and government funding, and that feminism is to blame for this. This special edition presents eight papers inspired by the workshop, authored by scholars from Canada, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden and the United States. A second special issue comprised of eight other papers inspired by the workshop was published in the <em>Canadian Journal of Women and the Law</em> as volume 28(1) in 2016.</p><p>To find out more about this special edition, download the PDF file from this page.</p

Digital media and domestic violence in Australia : essential contexts

Domestic violence is a pervasive social problem in Australia. Digital media are increasingly integral to its dynamics. Technology-facilitated coercive control (TFCC) is a form of gender-based violence. This article examines domestic violence survivors’ experiences with TFCC, drawing on interviews with 20 Australian women. Study results enhance understanding of how abusers use digital media. We highlight four key contexts for understanding the role of technology in domestic violence: the coercive and controlling relationship, separation abuse, co-parenting and survivors’ safety work. These contexts provide insight into the dynamics of TFCC and illuminate key differences between this and other forms of online abuse

"Living in the darkness" : technology-facilitated coercive control, disenfranchised grief, and institutional betrayal

This article draws on interviews with 20 Australian women subjected to technology-facilitated coercive control (TFCC), foregrounding their accounts of grief and institutional betrayal. Findings show that while the harms of TFCC were significant, survivors’ experiences were often minimized and dismissed by justice institutions. Women experienced grief due to abuse and separation from partners who had betrayed them. This loss was compounded when seeking help. We propose that disenfranchised grief is an underexplored response to domestic violence and institutional betrayal as well as a potential intervention site, particularly in relation to technology-facilitated abuse

What’s Gendered about Gender-Based Violence? An Empirically Grounded Theoretical Exploration from Tanzania

Violence is often considered gendered on the basis that it is violence against women. This assumption is evident both in “gender-based violence” interventions in Africa and in the argument that gender is irrelevant if violence is also perpetrated against men. This article examines the relation of partner violence not to biological sex, but to gender as conceptualized in feminist theory. It theorizes the role of gender as an analytical category in dominant social meanings of “wifebeating” in Tanzania by analyzing arguments for and against wife-beating expressed in 27 focus group discussions in the Arumeru and Kigoma-Vijijini districts. The normative ideal of a “good beating” emerges from these data as one that is supported by dominant social norms and cyclically intertwined with “doing gender.” The author shows how the good beating supports, and is in turn supported by, norms that hold people accountable to their sex category. These hegemonic gender norms prescribe the performance of masculinity and femininity, power relations of inequality, and concrete material exploitation of women’s agricultural and domestic labor. The study has implications for policy and practice in interventions against violence, and suggests untapped potential in theoretically informed feminist research for understanding local power relations in the Global South