Political ParticipationPapers

A narrative study of Ni Una Menos as more than a protest against femicide: a plural political practice seeking to transform precarious life, relationships, knowledge, and solidarity.

A mixed-method study showing that Argentina’s abortion debate became politically possible through feminist organization and framing, rather than waiting for favorable opinion, secularization, or party leadership.

This comparative study examines how Islamist women in Tunisia and Egypt articulated rights and democratic participation after the Arab uprisings rather than assuming their politics from party labels alone.

Mervat Hatem maps Arab feminist debates beyond a single program, asking how changing states, generations, movements, and transnational agendas shape the authority to say what women want.

Obioma Nnaemeka theorizes African feminist agency through negotiation, give-and-take, and the strategic navigation of institutions rather than a universal script of confrontation.

This influential 2000 article critiques both Judith Butler's theory of the subject and the practice of identity politics in feminism. Hekman proposes a middle ground between modern and postmodern conceptions of the subject while arguing for removing identity from the political realm entirely. The paper challenges fundamental assumptions about how feminism organizes politically around identity categories.

This 2000 article by Alison Assiter develops a distinctive approach to feminist epistemology centered on the concepts of 'emancipatory values' and 'epistemic communities.' Assiter argues that knowledge production is fundamentally shaped by the values of the communities in which it occurs, and that feminist epistemology should focus on creating communities whose values promote emancipation rather than oppression. The paper offers a modernist feminist epistemology that is collective rather than individualist, value-centered rather than value-neutral.

An exploration of how mothers as political activists challenge traditional conceptions of citizenship. Reiger examines maternal activism in Australian childbirth reform movements, arguing that mothers' claims for participation in health policy reconceive citizenship to include care, embodiment, and community advocacy.

This 2000 article by leading feminist sociologist Sylvia Walby challenges the dominance of standpoint epistemology and the 'politics of location' in feminist theory. Walby argues that in an era of globalization, feminism needs to move beyond location-based knowledge claims and embrace the power of reasoned argument to make effective universal claims about gender justice. The paper engages critically with postmodern and postcolonial feminist theories that privilege particular standpoints over universal reasoning.

This 2000 article examines feminist agency through the lens of embodiment, drawing on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to analyze the British suffragette movement. Parkins focuses on Mary Leigh's suffragette career to argue that corporeal performance - the strategic use of women's bodies in daring protests - constituted a powerful form of feminist political agency that contested the boundaries of citizenship and the political domain.

Gwendolyn Mikell examines how African women’s political struggles are distorted when Western feminist categories or nationalist narratives claim to represent them without attending to material survival and local institutions.

This groundbreaking 1990 essay provides a feminist critique of Habermas's theory of the public sphere. Fraser introduces the concept of 'subaltern counterpublics' to reveal the exclusionary nature of the bourgeois public sphere, arguing for the necessity of multiple publics and offering a new theoretical framework for understanding democratic participation and social justice.