Sifting Through Tradition: The Creation of Jewish Feminist Identities

In recent decades, feminists have been questioning patriarchal religions. As a result, many find themselves ambivalent about their religious and spiritual identities. This paper presents a model of identity formation that addresses the processes by which potentially conflicted identities are integrated. This model is based on research about how women who identify themselves as both Jewish and feminist create unconflicted Jewish feminist identities. Through a process ofsifting through their available options, they have chosen to identify with only those aspects of Judaism and feminism that satisfy their feminist, religious, and perhaps most importantly, their spiritual, needs. Because these needs vary, what it means to be a Jewish feminist is not static. Three types of Jewish feminist identity—inclusionist, transformationist, and reinterpretationist—are identified.     

The Impact of Feminist Attitudes on the Relation between Racial Awareness and Racial Identity

This study examined the role of liberal and inclusive feminist attitudes in the development of a positive racial identity in a sample of White female undergraduates in the Midwestern United States. Participants (N?=?90) provided self-report data on their racial awareness, liberal and inclusive feminist attitudes, racial identity and demographic information. The main research question was how and to what extent liberal and inclusive feminism influence the relationship between racial awareness and racial identity. Building on conceptual scholarship on identity theory and the intersectionality, results indicated that the relation between racial awareness and racial identity was partially mediated by inclusive feminist attitudes but not by liberal feminist attitudes. The results suggest that a specific type of feminism, which takes into account the experience of race, plays a significant role in our understanding of how White women develop a positive White identity. Results highlight the intersection of race and gender in college student development and have potential implications for administrative responses to student adjustment in increasingly diverse college environments.     

Minding the gap between feminist identity and attitudes: the behavioral and ideological divide between feminists and non-labelers

Sexism persists in the contemporary United States and has deleterious effects on women and girls. This suggests that feminism--as a movement, a set of attitudes, or an explicit identity--is still warranted. Although feminist attitudes may buffer against the effects of sexism, notably in health domains, we suggest that there may be an ideological divide between those who hold such attitudes while rejecting the identity (non-labelers) and self-identified feminists. Non-labelers engage in less collective action on behalf of women's rights. On the basis of survey responses of 276 college students, non-labelers appear to be self-interested. We argue that disentangling attitudes from identity is crucial for sharpening predictions about the relation of feminism to other psychological and behavioral variables, and for engaging in broader social change. Furthermore, understanding whether non-labelers' rejection of feminist identity is rooted in fear of stigma associated with the label, neoliberal beliefs, or other explanations is important to those organizing for reform.     

Julia Kristeva's Feminist Revolutions

Julia Kristeva is known as rejecting feminism, nonetheless her work is useful for feminist theory. I reconsider Kristeva's rejection of feminism and her theories of difference, identity, and maternity, elaborating on Kristeva's contributions to debates over the necessity of identity politics, indicating how Kristeva's theory suggests the cause of and possible solutions to women's oppression in Western culture, and, using Kristeva's theory, setting up a framework for a feminist rethinking of politics and ethics.     

Feminism and Attachment Parenting: Attitudes, Stereotypes, and Misperceptions

This paper investigated attitudes and stereotypes about what feminist women, primarily from the United States, believed about a number of practices associated with attachment parenting which is theorized to be both feminist and non-feminist. The goals of this study were to determine whether feminists endorsed attachment parenting and whether stereotypes of feminists’ beliefs corresponded to actual feminists’ attitudes. Women were recruited online, primarily through blogs, to complete an online survey about feminism and mothering. Four hundred and thirty one women comprised the sample for the current investigation and included heterosexual-identified feminist mothers (n?=?147), feminist non-mothers (n?=?75), non-feminist mothers (n?=?143), and non-feminist non-mothers (n?=?66). Participants were asked to rate their own attitudes towards specific practices associated with attachment parenting and to indicate their perceptions of the beliefs of the typical feminist. Results indicated that feminists were more supportive of attachment parenting practices than were non-feminists. Non-feminists, particularly mothers, held misperceptions about the typical feminist, seeing them as largely uninterested in the time-intensive and hands-on practices associated with attachment parenting. Feminist mothers also held stereotypes about feminists and saw themselves as somewhat atypical feminists who were more interested in attachment parenting than they thought was typical of feminists. Our data indicated that feminists did endorse attachment parenting and that stereotypes of feminists related to attachment parenting are untrue. Furthermore, the role of feminism in the identity of feminist mothers and whether attachment parenting is truly a feminist way to parent are discussed.     

Predictors and Correlates of Collective Action

Social identity theory suggests that feminist identity should predict engagement in collective action on behalf of women. We examined predictors of collective action by asking female college students (N = 215) to complete a set of questionnaires that measure life experiences, beliefs about feminism and collective action, feminist self-labeling, and involvement in women-focused collective activities. Life experiences (i.e., having a feminist mother, having taken a women's studies class, and having experienced sex discrimination), feminist attitudes and beliefs, feminist self-labeling, and belief in collective action were positively correlated with collective action, whereas conservatism was negatively correlated with collective action. A logistic stepwise regression revealed that the Synthesis stage of feminist identity development was the only variable that uniquely contributed to predicting feminist activism.     

On Decolonizing Social Ontology and the Feminist Canon for Transnational Feminisms

Serene J. Khader’s Decolonizing Universalism presents a vision for how feminism might be decolonized for transnational work by doing without traditional Western feminist values and focusing instead on opposing sexist oppression. This paper presents a challenge to the idea that feminism consists in opposing sexist oppression, claiming that it instead consists in opposing gender oppression, where that includes combating cissexism and heterosexism. More specifically, it argues that critiquing cissexist criteria within gender categories as well as critiquing harms that follow from having a queer sexual identity are decidedly feminist tasks. Furthermore, cases of these harms where group identities cannot arise in the social ontology due to a lack of hermeneutical resources challenge the idea that feminism is concerned only with oppression. The second half of the paper extends Khader’s critique of the Western liberal moral vocabulary of feminism by proposing a radical decolonization of the feminist canon as it is usually conceived in the global North.     

Relations Among Dimensions of Feminism and Internalized Heterosexism in Lesbians and Bisexual Women

This study was designed to examine the relations among dimensions of feminism and internalized heterosexism in 227 lesbian and bisexual women. In addition, psychometric support for 2 newly created multiple-item scales, Self-Identification as a Feminist (SIF) and Involvement in Feminist Activities Scale (IFAS), is provided. Results indicate that internalized heterosexism is correlated significantly with most of the feminist dimensions assessed in this study (i.e., self-identification as a feminist, involvement in feminist activities, attitudes toward feminism, feminist identity development, and various feminist ideologies). Interesting relations among feminist identity development and feminist ideologies were found. In addition, involvement in feminist activities was uniquely predicted by self-identification as a feminist and the Embeddedness-Emanation and Active Commitment dimensions of feminist identity development. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

FEMINISM AS LIFE RAFT

We looked at relationships between academic women's feminist identity and their perceptions of discrimination. From a sample of self-labeled feminist professors of psychology who had participated in the Feminist Teaching Project, we examined previously transcribed interviews and also collected new, auxiliary information. We expected to find that our respondents would view feminism as both provoking discrimination and helping them cope with discrimination. We found that experiences with gender discrimination were common among our sample, but that feminism in isolation was not perceived by our respondents as a provocation for problems. Rather than making it hard for women to swim in academic waters, feminism seemed to serve as a life raft for many professors.     

The Discrepancy Between How Women See Themselves and Feminists Predicts Identification with Feminism

Many women who accept the basic tenets of feminist ideology are reluctant to call themselves feminists, which is problematic because feminist self-identification is related to a variety of positive outcomes. The present research tests the idea that discrepancies between women’s self-view and feminist-view on the dimensions of competence and warmth are related to identification with feminism. This supposition is guided by the idea that a full understanding of why women have difficulty embracing feminism must take into account not only their view of feminists, but also whether women see themselves as different from feminists. Three online survey studies, which included 387, 288, and 116 adult U.S. women, demonstrate that perception of warmth identification with feminism was lower if women regard feminists as less warm than they see themselves. For perceptions of competence, the direction of this discrepancy was irrelevant: The more women see feminists as differently competent (i.e., higher or lower), the less they identify with feminists. Moreover, perceived discrepancy predicted identification with feminism even after controlling for women’s agreement with feminist values. Both endorsement of feminist values and perceived discrepancy are important in predicting identification with feminism and therefore practical interventions to maximize identification should target both of these components. For perceived discrepancy, interventions to reduce feminist-self discrepancies will likely be most effective if they target stereotypes of feminists as being cold.     

Feminism as a Radical Ethics? Questions for Feminist Researchers in the Humanities

A feminist perspective on selfhood – bound to a perspective on otherness – is the main concern of this article. The resonance of this notion of selfhood both with ethical philosophy and with the language of humanism enables a deeper understanding of a feminist ethics as well as its internal tensions. The article considers the relationship of feminism and humanism as one of “paradoxical fluidity” rather than antithetical polarization, to explore the ways in which feminism’s alliance with contemporary ethics exemplifies its paradoxical relation to humanism. The study then underlines the vital contribution of feminist discourse to an ethical understanding of selfhood and intersubjectivity. Finally, it examines the work of experimental Canadian poet Lola Lemire Tostevin, who reveals the importance of an ethical, feminist version of selfhood that highlights the insufficiency as well as the potential of both humanist and postmodern versions of subjectivity.     

Gender sceptics and feminist politics

Some feminist gender sceptics hold that the conditions for satisfying the concept woman cannot be discerned. This has been taken to suggest that (i) the efforts to fix feminism’s scope are undermined because of confusion about the extension of the term ‘woman’, and (ii) this confusion suggests that feminism cannot be organised around women because it is unclear who satisfies woman. Further, this supposedly threatens the effectiveness of feminist politics: feminist goals are said to become unachievable, if feminist politics lacks a clear subject matter. In this paper, I argue that such serious consequences do not follow from the gender sceptic position. I presented an earlier version of this paper at the ‘Stirling Political Philosophy Group’ meeting and am grateful to those present for their constructive criticisms. I am also grateful to Alan Millar, the anonymous referees for this journal and Jenny Saul (who has read more than one version of this paper!) for their detailed and extremely helpful comments and suggestions.     

The Relationship Between Gender Social Identity and Support for Feminism

This study is an application of social identity theory to feminist consciousness and activism. For women, strong gender identifications may enhance support for equality struggles, whereas for men, they may contribute to backlashes against feminism. University students (N = 276), primarily Euroamerican, completed a measure of gender self-esteem (GSE, that part of one's self-concept derived from one's gender), and two measures of feminism. High GSE in women and low GSE in men were related to support for feminism. Consistent with past research, women were more supportive of feminism than men, and in both genders, support for feminist ideas was greater than self-identification as a feminist.     

Dismantling the Self/Other Dichotomy in Science: Towards a Feminist Model of the Immune System

Despite the development of a vast body of literature pertaining to feminism and science, examples of how feminist phifosophies might be applied to scientific theories and practice have been limited. Moreover, most scientists remain unfamiliar with how feminism pertains to their work. Using the example of the immune system, this paper applies three feminist epistemologies feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theory, and feminist postmodernismtoassess competingchims of immune function within a feminist context.     

Gender Role and Feminism Revisited: A Follow-Up Study

In this follow-up to our earlier study (Toller, Suter, & Trautman, Gender role identity and attitudes towards feminism, Sex Roles, 51, 85–90, 2004) we examine the interrelationships among gender role, support for feminism, and willingness to self-label as feminist. Ten percent of college students previously surveyed participated in qualitative interviews, which elicited characterizations of feminists, whether students self-identified as feminist, suggestions for garnering support for feminism, and for interpretation of the initial study’s findings. Students were asked to speculate why we found that highly masculine men and highly feminine women were neither likely to self-identify as feminist nor to support the feminist movement and why more feminine men and more masculine women were found to be more willing to self-label as feminist and more likely to support the feminist movement.     

A qualitative investigation of Muslim and Christian women's views of religion and feminism in their lives

This qualitative investigation explored a relatively understudied aspect of cultural diversity: feminism and religion in the lives of religiously diverse women. More specifically, structured interviews were used to investigate views of religion, women's issues, gender roles, culture, and feminism for a small group of Muslim and Christian women living in the United States. The data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). Findings indicated a complex relationship between feminism, gender roles, culture, and religion for these women with the majority of the Muslim women reporting that their religion supports feminist principles and identifying themselves as feminist. Christian women were less willing to endorse the feminist label. Implications for multicultural feminist practice are discussed.     

What Does It Mean to Be a Postcolonial Feminist? The Artwork of Mithu Sen

This article examines what the work of New Delhi‐based artist Mithu Sen brings to thinking about being a postcolonial feminist. Using images from Sen's solo exhibit in New Delhi and New York titled Half Full (2007), I theorize on the complexities that proliferate when thinking about postcolonial feminism. Sen's images play with “an” identity to showcase the hybrid and mobile configuration of postcolonial subjectivity. Sen's provocative aesthetic urges us to rethink defining a set of conditions or tenets for postcolonial feminism. Rather, her aesthetic politics propels through humor and provides a prism to constantly reimagine postcolonial feminist subjectivity by urging a consideration of maps that intersect and overlap.     

THE DIFFERENTIAL RELATIONSHIP OF FEMINIST ATTITUDES AND FEMINIST IDENTITY TO SELF-EFFICACY

Feminist theorists have suggested that feminism provides a number of benefits for women, particularly regarding self-evaluations. However, most studies have conflated feminist attitudes and feminist identity. The main goal of this study was to assess the differential relationships of feminist attitudes and feminist identity to self-efficacy. Four hundred thirty-five students were surveyed at the beginning and end of their women's and gender studies (WGS) classes. In general, feminist attitudes and feminist identity were related to self-efficacy variables at pretest and to change in these variables over time. Feminist identity partially mediated the relationship between feminist attitudes and self-efficacy. Additionally, the results of this study generally support previous findings regarding the effect of WGS classes on students' feminist attitudes, feminist identity, and self-efficacy. Implications of these findings for the importance of feminist identity are discussed.     

BOOK REVIEWS

About 25% of the Jewish population in Israel consists of “secular believers.” They self-identify as secular but also believe in God or some kind of higher/deeper power(s). Their identity conflicts with the conventional identification of secularism with atheism, as do post-secular theologies, whose theological ideas reject traditional religion while adopting concepts of faith. Western feminism proved especially conducive to the development of post-secular theology. This study addresses both Israeli Judaism and feminist theology from a post-secular perspective. It analyses two academic fields of discourse—feminist Jewish theology and feminism in Israel—to determine whether, how and why they are developing a Jewish post-secular feminist theology. The study reveals that such theologies are rare and suggests that discursive field structure limits their development.     

WHAT DO FEMINISTS BELIEVE?

When a woman says "I am a feminist" what does she mean? What do other people think she means? We asked 71 women to complete the Feminist Perspectives Scale (Henley, Meng, O'Brien, McCarthy, & Sockloskie, 1998) from their own perspective and from the perspective of a "typical feminist." Women who self-identified as feminists had stronger beliefs than those who did not on all feminist perspectives except cultural feminism. Both groups believed that a typical feminist held stronger radical, socialist, and cultural feminist beliefs than they themselves did, although the discrepancies were greater for nonfeminists. Nonfeminists viewed a typical feminist as endorsing stronger cultural feminist views than did feminists. Our results indicate that feminist self-identity is related to endorsement of feminist ideologies, and that both feminists and nonfeminists think that a typical feminist is more extreme than they are. The results also suggest that cultural feminism is a contested ideology; it is not endorsed by feminists, but is ascribed to them by nonfeminists