All posts tagged: Feminism

Hindu women look to ancient goddesses for guidance on modern feminism

Hindu women look to ancient goddesses for guidance on modern feminism

(RNS) — Preity Upala has lived more than a few lives. After a career as an investment banker in Australia, Upala moved to the U.S. to pursue her dream of attending film school, eventually landing roles in major Bollywood films like “Bahubali” and in the Hollywood production “Sex and the City 2.” Now, in Los Angeles, Upala is a film producer and podcast host. And if her resume is not varied enough, Upala is also considered a global strategist, called upon by news organizations worldwide for her expertise in international diplomacy and foreign policy. But Upala, who is Hindu, sees these multiple pursuits as compatible, inspired by the many facets of the divine feminine in her tradition. “The goddess worship is so prevalent in our culture,” said the Dubai-born Upala, “but the goddess has many faces. There are many goddesses. It’s not just the devout wife or devotee, it is the fierce Kali or the Saraswati, who is all about knowledge.” In common, she says, all goddesses and women hold a part of Shakti, the …

What is intersectionality and why does it make feminism more effective?

What is intersectionality and why does it make feminism more effective?

The way we talk about society and the people and structures in it is constantly changing. One term you may come across this International Women’s Day is “intersectionality”. And specifically, the concept of “intersectional feminism”. Intersectionality refers to the fact that everyone is part of multiple social categories. These include gender, social class, sexuality, (dis)ability and racialisation (when people are divided into “racial” groups often based on skin colour or features). These categories are not independent of each other, they intersect. This looks different for every person. For example, a black woman without a disability will have a different experience of society than a white woman without a disability – or a black woman with a disability. An intersectional approach makes social policy more inclusive and just. Its value was evident in research during the pandemic, when it became clear that women from various groups, those who worked in caring jobs and who lived in crowded circumstances were much more likely to die from COVID. A long-fought battle American civil rights leader and scholar Kimberlé …

Claudia Sheinbaum launches her presidential campaign, intertwining themes of environmental stewardship, feminism, and the perpetuation of AMLO’s transformative legacy

Claudia Sheinbaum launches her presidential campaign, intertwining themes of environmental stewardship, feminism, and the perpetuation of AMLO’s transformative legacy

Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum greets supporters upon her arrival at her opening campaign rally at the Zocalo in Mexico City, Friday, March 1, 2024. AUREA DEL ROSARIO / AP On Friday, March 1, the Mexican Left occupied not only Latin America’s biggest square, Mexico City’s Zocalo, but also all the adjacent streets. The occasion: the launch of Claudia Sheinbaum’s campaign for the June 2 presidential election. Thousands of activists from the National Regeneration Movement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, or MORENA), the political party founded by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) in 2011, waited several hours before being able to hear, mostly through a giant screen, the woman everyone now calls “Claudia,” who was greeted with shouts of “la presidenta,” Spanish for “(female) president.” Brenda Suarez, with a “Claudia” cap on her forehead and a “MORENA” flag in her hand, drove three hours to attend what she considers “a historic moment: cheering on our future president, who is, moreover, a scientist! My two daughters already see Claudia as a role model,” said the 43-year-old shopkeeper, …

Catholic women working to change the church take inspiration from female saints

Catholic women working to change the church take inspiration from female saints

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Women in key roles at the Vatican and Catholic universities in its close orbit have been leading an effort to raise women’s standing and visibility in church governance, creating a growing network of experts, diplomats and scholars like them around the world. “Today we still have a lot to do to promote women. There are still many areas where women continue to be discriminated against,” said Gabriella Gambino, a professor of bioethics and undersecretary of the Vatican Department for Laity, Family and Life. Gambino appeared at a press event on Wednesday (Feb. 28) in Rome to promote “Women in the Church: Builders of Humanity,” a conference scheduled for March 7 and 8 at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. The conference will focus on the lives and legacies of 10 female saints, who despite the challenges of their times and cultures left a meaningful mark in the church. Among better-known canonized women such as Mother Teresa and Elizabeth Ann Seton, the conference is examining the life of Sister Josephine Bakhita, …

In My Mother’s Archive | David A. Bell

In My Mother’s Archive | David A. Bell

Until I was thirty-three, I thought I knew everything important about the life my mother, Pearl Kazin Bell, had lived before I was born. She often told me about it: her desperately poor childhood in a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn; her years at Brooklyn College and then, briefly, in an English graduate program at Harvard; her jobs at various magazines in New York City, including Harper’s Bazaar and The New Yorker. I knew she had had a brief, unhappy first marriage to a photographer named Victor Kraft, with whom she had moved to Brazil for a time. I knew she had written fiction and published a lovely story in The New Yorker about the first time her family celebrated Thanksgiving. I knew that she had been friends with famous writers: Truman Capote, Elizabeth Bishop, Saul Bellow. I knew that she had traveled widely, and lived for several months with Capote in a ramshackle house in Taormina, Sicily. I was all the more confident that I knew about her earlier life because so much about …

Gen Z boys’ attitudes to feminism are more nuanced than negative

Gen Z boys’ attitudes to feminism are more nuanced than negative

Young men are more likely than older men to think that feminism has done more harm than good, according to a new survey, suggesting a backward step in attitudes to gender equality. Young women aged 16-29 are also slightly more likely than women aged 30-59 to say that feminism has done more harm than good. The survey, conducted by King’s College London and Ipsos, also found a growing divergence in attitudes towards feminism, masculinity and gender equality between young men and young women. On the surface, the findings chime with our experiences of conducting research directly with young people on these topics and delivering relationships and sex education in schools. But in both our work and the survey data, the reality is more nuanced than these headline findings suggest. Most of the survey sample — including the younger age groups — do not sit at the more divided extremes of the response options. While 16% of men aged 16-29 thought feminism had done more harm than good, more than double this proportion, 36%, thought it …

Have we reached peak Babygirl?

Have we reached peak Babygirl?

It’s the Baftas this weekend, and the ‘he-vage’ will be out in force. It’s moved on a step from the deep-Vs of my youth. Now, the dress code may as well read ‘black tie, leave the shirt at home’. I’m happy that men are playing with fashion and I certainly don’t want to go back to our old, stale ways. But I sort of preferred it when there was just a sprinkling of lewks to really discern who was cool and who definitely isn’t. When we live in a world where even the 8ft Super Bowl Monster Travis Kelce is wearing a sparkly suit out to a party with girlfriend Taylor Swift, we know the world has eaten itself. You only have to look at Travis’ brother, dressed as a horror clown in a gimp mask and red and yellow dungarees to know that this is a stylist’s work and nothing to do with his own natural taste.   Source link

Abortion Rights as Equal Rights | Felicia Kornbluh

Abortion Rights as Equal Rights | Felicia Kornbluh

Two weeks ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned its own 1985 precedent to rule that the state’s provisions for equal treatment of citizens, including its Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), could apply to abortion rights. At immediate issue is the question of coverage for abortion care under the state’s Medicaid program. Now the lower state courts need to reconsider the case: in light of the guidance they have received from the justices who sit above them, they are quite likely to rule that depriving low-income women of Medicaid coverage for their abortions violates the state constitution. The Hyde Amendment, attached to every federal budget bill since 1976, still forbids the spending of any federal funds for abortion, but if such a ruling goes through, women in Pennsylvania who qualify for the program will have their abortion care covered by state-only Medicaid funds. It’s no small development for three justices out of five on the highest court of the country’s fifth most populous state to rule that their predecessors made a mistake when they deemed it constitutional …

Tired of Pink | Lauren Michele Jackson

Tired of Pink | Lauren Michele Jackson

“Slut” and “whore” evince, like piped exhaust, the running engine of Mean Girls. Early in the original film, our protagonist and narrator and new girl, Cady Heron, is recruited by two classmates, Janis and Damian, into a revenge plot against “the Plastics,” a trio of popular girls perched, in four-inch pumps, at the tippy-top of the pecking order at North Shore High. Janis introduces Regina, the head hen, to Cady, and to us in turn, as follows: “Don’t be fooled, because she may seem like your typical selfish, back-stabbing, slut-faced ho-bag. But in reality, she is so much more than that.” And we’re off. Permit me to recount a scene that is by now well known. Cady strikes out on her own one night, going solo in an act of “major plastic sabotage,” previously a three-person job. It goes down in split-screen. Over a seeming two-way phone call, Cady asks Regina if she’s mad at Gretchen, her second-in-command, for having been nominated for Spring Fling Queen, a title Regina has held since time immemorial (that …