United States of America

Citation:

Weissman, Deborah M. 2004. “The Human Rights Dilemma: Rethinking the Humanitarian Project.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 35 (April): 259–336.

Author: Deborah M. Weissman

Abstract:

This Article provides an interpretive account of the human rights discourse at a time when the U.S. legal community is deepening its relationship with these issues. It maps the context of the human rights project over the past one hundred years, with a critical eye and as a cautionary tale. It reviews the historical circumstances and the ideological framework in which human rights have been appropriated as an instrument of national policy, often to the detriment of humanitarian objectives. It considers the role of law, not only as an instrument by which colonial rule was maintained but as a system that has claimed center stage in the human rights project, often producing outcomes inimical to human rights.

It demonstrates that the disparity in power between colonizer and colonized continues to affect the ongoing development of human rights norms and has resulted in the production of legal remedies that are often incapable of safeguarding international human rights. It uses comparative legal discourse as a way to illustrate how the human rights project stipulates the need to rescue people of other cultures from themselves. The Article argues for a shift in methodological and attitudinal approaches to human rights work and suggests that commitment to human rights must be guided by an awareness of the power relationships from which remedies originate. It contends that without such awareness, humanitarian enterprises may inadvertently result in baneful consequences and implicate the human rights project in the very wrongs it seeks to correct.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Women, Humanitarian Assistance, International Law, International Human Rights, International Organizations, Rights, Human Rights Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2004

Citation:

Booth, Bradford, William W. Falk, David R. Segal, and Mady Wechsler Segal. 2000. “The Impact of Military Presence in Local Labor Markets on the Employment of Women.” Gender and Society 14 (2): 318–32.

Authors: Bradford Booth, William W. Falk, David R. Segal, Mady Wechsler Segal

Abstract:

This article uses Public Use Microsample (PUMS) data drawn from the 1990 census to explore the relationship between military presence, defined as the percentage of the local labor force in the active-duty armed forces, and women's employment and earnings across local labor market areas (LMAs) in the United States. Comparisons of local rates of unemployment and mean women's earnings are made between those LMAs in which the military plays a disproportionate role in the local labor market and those in which military presence is low. Results suggest that women who live in labor market areas with a substantial (5 percent or greater) military presence have, on average, lower annual earnings and higher rates of unemployment than their counterparts who live in nonmilitary LMAs. The argument is made that through the interaction of several socially situated conditions-including gender, family, labor markets, human capital, and place-the military emerges as a source of inequality in labor market out-comes for women working on or around military installations.

Topics: Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2000

Citation:

Sarvasy, Wendy. 1997. “Social Citizenship from a Feminist Perspective.” Hypatia 12 (4): 54-73.

Author: Wendy Sarvasy

Abstract:

In this article I construct a feminist notion of social citizenship from early twentieth-century feminism in the United States. Arguing that there are four aspects to the interconnection between women's citizenship and social democracy-new modes of citizenship, a socialized view of rights, new spaces for participation, and a female-privileged definition of gender equality-I suggest that such a concept could help us move from a welfare state to a feminist social democracy.

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Political Participation Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 1997

Citation:

Powell, Catherine. 2005. “Lifting Our Veil of Ignorance: Culture, Constitutionalism, and Women’s Human Rights in Post-September 11 America.” Hastings Law Journal 57: 331-383.

Author: Catherine Powell

Topics: Gender, Women, Governance, Constitutions, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2005

Citation:

Guidry, John A., and Mark Q. Sawyer. 2003. “Contentious Pluralism: The Public Sphere and Democracy.” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2): 273–89.

Authors: John A. Guidry, Mark Q. Sawyer

Abstract:

What do peasants in eighteenth-century England, African Americans in Reconstruction-era Virginia, mothers in Nicaragua and Argentina, and contemporary transnational activists have to do with one another? They all illustrate instances where marginalized groups challenge a lack of democracy or the limitations of existing democracy. Democracy is both a process and a product of struggles against power. Both the social capital literature and literature that focuses on democracy as a product of institutions can undervalue the actions of regular people who imagine a democratic world beyond anything that actually exists. The four cases examined in this article demonstrate that marginalized groups use a variety of performative and subversive methods to uproot the public sphere from its exclusionary history as they imagine, on their own terms, democratic possibilities that did not previously exist. In so doing, they plant the seeds of a more egalitarian public politics in new times and places. This process is "contentious pluralism," and we ask political scientists in all subfields to look to popular movements and changing political structures as they explore the promise of democracy and to rethink the gap between democracy as an ideal and the ways in which people actually experience it.

Topics: Governance, Political Participation Regions: Americas, Central America, North America, South America, Europe, Northern Europe Countries: Argentina, Nicaragua, United Kingdom, United States of America

Year: 2003

Citation:

Mayer, Tamar, ed. 2000. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. New York: Routlege.

Author: Tamar Mayer

Abstract:

This book provides a unique social science reading on the construction of nation, gender and sexuality and on the interactions among them. It includes international case studies from Indonesia, Ireland, former Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Australia, the USA, Turkey, China, India and the Caribbean. The contributors offer both the masculine and feminine perspective, exposing how nations are comprised of sexed bodies, and exploring the gender ironies of nationalism and how sexuality plays a key role in nation building and in sustaining national identity.

The contributors conclude that control over access to the benefits of belonging to the nation is invariably gendered; nationalism becomes the language through which sexual control and repression is justified masculine prowess is expressed and exercised. Whilst it is men who claim the prerogatives of nation and nation building it is, for the most part, women who actually accept the obligation of nation and nation building. (Amazon)

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Nationalism, Sexuality Regions: Africa, MENA, West Africa, Caribbean countries, North America, Asia, East Asia, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Balkans, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Oceania Countries: Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, United States of America, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2000

Citation:

Akinsulure-Smith, Adeyinka M., Jessica B. Ghiglione, and Carrie Wollmershauser. 2008. “Healing in the Midst of Chaos: Nah We Yone’s African Women’s Wellness Group.” Women & Therapy 32 (1): 105-20. doi:10.1080/02703140802384602.

Authors: Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith, Jessica B. Ghiglione, Carrie Wollmershauser

Abstract:

This article discusses the creative use of the group treatment modality to provide psychosocial support to African women refugees and asylum seekers with a history of refugee trauma, war, and human rights abuses who have fled to the United States. In particular, this article describes the African Women’s Wellness Group developed by Nah We Yone, Inc., a small grassroots organization in the New York City area. This women’s group draws on the tenets of traditional Western group psychotherapy while using African cultural awareness to provide healing. The rationale for this type of treatment, group design, specific techniques used to provide healing, along with various group-related themes and challenges are described. This type of treatment provides an example of the usefulness of group therapy technique with traumatized displaced women struggling to survive in a new cultural setting.

Keywords: African women, asylum seekers, refugees, trauma, war

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Women, Health, Trauma, Rights, Human Rights Regions: Africa, Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2008

Citation:

Cohen, Philip N. 1996. “Nationalism and Suffrage: Gender Struggle in Nation-Building America.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 21 (3): 707-27.

Author: Philip N. Cohen

Topics: Gender, Women, Nationalism, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 1996

Citation:

Volpp, Leti. 2001. “Feminism Versus Multiculturalism.” Columbia Law Review 101 (5): 1181–1218.

Author: Leti Volpp

Abstract:

To posit feminism and multiculturalism as oppositional is to assume that minority women are victims of their cultures. This assumption, as Professor Volpp illustrates in this Essay, is achieved by a discursive strategy that constructs gender subordination as integral only to certain cultures. She traces the origins of the ubiquitous claim that minority and Third World cultures are more subordinating than culture in the West to the history of colonialism, the origins of liberalism, depictions of the feminist subject, and the use of binary logic. Pitting feminism against multiculturalism has certain consequences: It obscures the influences that in fact shape cultural practices, hides the forces besides culture that affect women's lives, elides the way women exercise agency within patriarchy, and masks the level of violence within the United States. Professor Volpp concludes by suggesting a basis for a constructive dialogue beyond the discourse of feminism versus multiculturalism.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2001

Citation:

Song, Sarah. 2005. “Majority Norms, Multiculturalism, and Gender Equality.” The American Political Science Review 99 (4): 473–489.

Author: Sarah Song

Abstract:

Although many scholars have discussed the conflict that can arise between multiculturalism and gender equality, both critics and defenders of multiculturalism have largely overlooked a variety of interactive dynamics between majority and minority cultures that have important implications for the theory and practice of multiculturalism. Examining cases in the U.S. context, this essay argues for an interactive view of the dilemmas of gender and culture that is attentive to interconnections between majority and minority cultures. What is of particular concern for debates on multiculturalism is that the mainstream legal and normative frameworks within which minority claims for accommodation are evaluated have themselves been informed by patriarchal norms, which in turn have offered support for gender hierarchies within minority cultures. The interactive view defended here suggests the need to scrutinize both minority and majority norms and practices in evaluating the claims of minority cultures.

Topics: Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equity Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2005