Menstrual Blood as a Weapon of Resistance

This paper examines how women in the North of Ireland used menstrual blood as a means of resisting the state. It explores the central role that menstrual blood and menstruation have played throughout the conflict – both as an instrument of war and as a weapon of resistance for female political prisoners. Various arms of the state used menstruation as a means of control over republican women. But women also used menstrual blood to challenge and to resist such attempts by the state. This article suggests that the use of menstrual blood in resisting the state is an act so subversive that it effectively disrupted staunchly entrenched gender norms in Northern Irish society prior to the height of the conflict. This in turn provoked the rise of a distinct form of feminism rooted within the republican movement

Flaunting Our Way to Freedom? SlutWalks, Gendered Protest and Feminist Futures.

This article questions the emancipatory potential of the SlutWalk movement and asks whether there is transformative potential in using the gendered body as an explicit form of protest. When the SlutWalk movement spontaneously erupted in February 2011 it struck a chord with many women in Canada and beyond. Many seasoned feminists have also championed the SlutWalk cause. The movement is not without controversy, however, and has sparked fierce debates about the power of language and the usefulness of reclamation as a feminist strategy. Despite the accolades, the SlutWalk movement, I argue, is riddled with problems related to inclusivity, a tendency to universalise women’s experiences, and lacks a structural account of violence against women. A comparative contextualisation of SlutWalk to other forms of body protest reveals that, while it is possible to rely on gender tropes when using the body a site of resistance, the subversive capabilities of the SlutWalk movement are limited. SlutWalk also illustrates how Third-Wave slippages into postfeminist politics are dangerous as they hide the structural and intersectional nature of women’s oppression. Taken in combination, I argue, such problems make the transformative potential of SlutWalk highly questionable

Precarity in the Ivory Cage: Neoliberalism and Casualisation of Work in the Irish Higher Education Sector

The higher education sector in Ireland has undergone major changes under the effect of neoliberalism including severe budget cuts, transfer of research funding to external agencies, reduction in permanent contracts and increased reliance on part-time, temporary staff for teaching and research roles. The neoliberalisation of the university, as in other countries, has dramatically changed the nature of work undertaken on behalf of the institution. Permanent jobs increasingly disappear in favour of low-paid, temporary employment. Such work comes without security, proper remuneration or benefits, and renders invisible the precarious workers whose labour the university relies on to function. Based on the results of an outreach project on casual academic labour practices, this paper reports on the discernible patterns in the work of the precariat in Irish higher education. Our results indicate that casualisation in the Irish context is systemic, gendered, and not the preserve of junior academics. We also suggest it predates austerity and has become so endemic that there are now few exit points out of precarious work and as such, many are now trapped in a hamster wheel of precarity

‘Not one of the family’: Gender and precarious work in the neoliberal university

Gender inequality within the university is well documented but proposals to tackle it tend to focus on the higher ranks, ignoring how it manifests within precarious work. Based on data collected as part of a broader participatory action research project on casual academic labour in Irish higher education, the article focuses on the intersection of precarious work and gender in academia. We argue that precarious female academics are non-citizens of the academy, a status that is reproduced through exploitative gendered practices and evident in formal/legal recognition (staff status, rights and entitlements, pay and valuing of work) as well as in informal dimensions (social and decision-making power). We, therefore, conclude that any attempts to challenge gender inequality in academia must look downward, not upward, to the ranks of the precarious academics.</p

Precarity in the Ivory Cage: Neoliberalism and Casualisation of Work in the Irish Higher Education Sector

The higher education sector in Ireland has undergone major changes under the effect of neoliberalism including severe budget cuts, transfer of research funding to external agencies, reduction in permanent contracts and increased reliance on part-time, temporary staff for teaching and research roles. The neoliberalisation of the university, as in other countries, has dramatically changed the nature of work undertaken on behalf of the institution. Permanent jobs increasingly disappear in favour of low-paid, temporary employment. Such work comes without security, proper remuneration or benefits, and renders invisible the precarious workers whose labour the university relies on to function. Based on the results of an outreach project on casual academic labour practices, this paper reports on the discernible patterns in the work of the precariat in Irish higher education. Our results indicate that casualisation in the Irish context is systemic, gendered, and not the preserve of junior academics. We also suggest it predates austerity and has become so endemic that there are now few exit points out of precarious work and as such, many are now trapped in a hamster wheel of precarity

‘Sometimes it would be nice to be a man’: negotiating gender identities after the Good Friday Agreement

Included in tex

‘Sometimes it would be nice to be a man’: negotiating gender identities after the Good Friday Agreement

Included in tex

Flaunting Our Way to Freedom? SlutWalks, Gendered Protest and Feminist Futures.

This article questions the emancipatory potential of the SlutWalk movement and asks whether there is transformative potential in using the gendered body as an explicit form of protest. When the SlutWalk movement spontaneously erupted in February 2011 it struck a chord with many women in Canada and beyond. Many seasoned feminists have also championed the SlutWalk cause. The movement is not without controversy, however, and has sparked fierce debates about the power of language and the usefulness of reclamation as a feminist strategy. Despite the accolades, the SlutWalk movement, I argue, is riddled with problems related to inclusivity, a tendency to universalise women’s experiences, and lacks a structural account of violence against women. A comparative contextualisation of SlutWalk to other forms of body protest reveals that, while it is possible to rely on gender tropes when using the body a site of resistance, the subversive capabilities of the SlutWalk movement are limited. SlutWalk also illustrates how Third-Wave slippages into postfeminist politics are dangerous as they hide the structural and intersectional nature of women’s oppression. Taken in combination, I argue, such problems make the transformative potential of SlutWalk highly questionable

Menstrual Blood as a Weapon of Resistance

This paper examines how women in the North of Ireland used menstrual blood as a means of resisting the state. It explores the central role that menstrual blood and menstruation have played throughout the conflict – both as an instrument of war and as a weapon of resistance for female political prisoners. Various arms of the state used menstruation as a means of control over republican women. But women also used menstrual blood to challenge and to resist such attempts by the state. This article suggests that the use of menstrual blood in resisting the state is an act so subversive that it effectively disrupted staunchly entrenched gender norms in Northern Irish society prior to the height of the conflict. This in turn provoked the rise of a distinct form of feminism rooted within the republican movement