Reconfiguring gendered independence: conceptual struggles in women's organizations
Date
2007-12-17T17:14:44Z
Authors
Gartside, Crystal Rose
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Abstract
This research explores how concepts of women’s independence are constituted, through neo-liberal and feminist discourses, by members of a feminist organization for women leaving abuse. Analysis of eight interviews and eight focus groups with organizational members, collected over a four year period, surface contesting discourses about individualism, choice, economic independence, collectivity and structural analyses. These discourses interact to produce complex conceptualizations of women’s independence, and produced new subjectivities for women within the organization. In the data, neo-liberal and feminist influences produced an integration of self-responsibility and collectivity, creating new ways of understanding women’s agency. Knowledge of these changing notions of gendered independence in organizations allows feminists to be strategic and reflexive about feminist political work within changing social and political terrain.
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Keywords
feminist, independence, feminist organizations, discourse analysis