Gender Norms

Starting from the Limit is a correspondence dialogue between Japanese feminist scholar Chizuko Ueno and former AV actress and writer Suzumi Suzuki. Two generations of women engage in candid dialogue on topics including body, sexuality, work, love, and mother-daughter relationships, presenting the collision and conversation between feminist thought and the lived reality of young women.

Angela Chen uses asexual people’s accounts to question sexual attraction as a measure of adulthood, love and normality, reframing freedom through refusal and relationship differences.

Convenience Store Woman is an Akutagawa Prize-winning novel by Japanese author Sayaka Murata. The protagonist, Keiko Furukura, is a 36-year-old woman who has worked at the same convenience store for 18 years and has no interest in society's expectations for women - marriage, children, a 'real' career. With dark humor, the novel sharply questions society's definition of 'normal' and its oppression of women who don't conform.

Training for a bout at Madison Square Garden, Thomas Page McBee asks how violence, privilege, vulnerability, and care are made into masculinity.

Cho Nam-joo traces Kim Jiyoung’s life from childhood to motherhood, showing how gender bias accumulates across family, education, work, and care while testing the limits of a case-file narrative.

A source-informed reading of NHK's reporting on poverty in Japan: how education debt, insecure work and childcare constraints can compound, without treating selected interviews as population statistics.

A surreal campus comedy directed by Emma Seligman about two queer high school students who start an after-school fight club to win over their dream cheerleader crushes. This film explores themes of queer identity, female friendship, gender power subversion, and adolescent sexual awakening through extremely exaggerated techniques, becoming a representative work of new-era queer feminism.

The feature directorial debut from 'We Are Lady Parts' creator Nida Manzoor, an action-comedy that blends Bollywood, martial arts, and sisterhood in an empowering story. Following rebellious teenager Ria's mission to save her sister Lena from becoming a wealthy man's caged-bird wife by organizing a friend rescue operation. The film explores themes of cultural identity, family expectations, female autonomy, and intergenerational female solidarity through innovative visual language.

The coming-of-age story of Prerna, a teenage girl from a remote village in Rajasthan who discovers skateboarding and challenges traditional gender expectations and social norms. This family-friendly inspirational film explores Indian rural women's educational rights, gender equality, caste system, and the transformative role of sports in women's empowerment through skateboarding.

In 1650 Kilkenny, Ireland, the friendship story between English girl Robyn and wild girl Mebh. This hand-drawn animation masterpiece fuses Irish folklore with feminist themes, deeply exploring gender role constraints, environmental protection, cultural colonialism, and female friendship and empowerment through two girls' journey of challenging patriarchal constraints and embracing natural forces.

An adaptation of Jane Austen's novel directed by Autumn de Wilde, starring Anya Taylor-Joy. The film follows wealthy young woman Emma Woodhouse in Regency-era England as she enthusiastically matchmakes for others, discovering her own true emotions in the process. The director reinterprets this classic literary work with exquisite visual aesthetics and a modern feminist perspective, deeply exploring important themes including female independence, class consciousness, marriage choices, and coming-of-age awakening.

Early summer. In a village in northern Turkey, Lale and her four sisters are walking home from school, playing innocently with some boys. The immorality of their play sets off a scandal that has unexpected consequences. The family home is progressively transformed into a prison; instruction in homemaking substitutes for school, and marriages begin to be arranged. The five sisters who share a common passion for freedom, find ways of getting around the constraints imposed on them.

Kate Kahle reflects on how diagnostic frameworks can miss autistic women and girls. Her talk connects masking, gender expectations and clinical recognition while cautioning against treating one personal story as every autistic person’s experience.

Nepali activist Bivishika Bhandari argues that naming bodies and sexuality is a practical condition for health, autonomy, and economic participation, especially for women taught to treat their own anatomy as shameful.

Sex educators Tiffany Kagure Mugo and Siphumeze Khundayi use humor to question sexual shame and rigid scripts, inviting viewers to place pleasure, communication and autonomy back in their own embodied experience.

Bangladeshi organizer Tasaffy Hossain treats gender not as an innate script but as a set of learned expectations that theatre, storytelling, and collective reflection can expose and revise.

A weekly podcast that examines films through a feminist lens while acknowledging the complexities and contradictions of loving problematic media. Hosts Kelly and Sarah discuss everything from classic Hollywood films to contemporary blockbusters, exploring themes of representation, power dynamics, and cultural impact with humor and insight.

Frisky History is hosted by Lacey and Robin, a podcast exploring the intersection of sex, gender, and history with humor. The show covers the evolution of sex education, contraceptive technology development, sex worker rights, political sex scandals, and historical changes in gender norms.

Surplus Value is a Chinese pan-feminist podcast founded by three media professionals: Zhang Zhiqi, Fu Shiye, and Leng Jianguo. The show's name comes from Marxist political economy, and discussions range from gender issues, labor and workplace, cultural criticism, to intimate relationships, examining women's situations in contemporary Chinese society from an interdisciplinary perspective.