This text examines and documents the issues women face in terms of lower status and lower power around the world and across cultures. The book then discusses what is being done from the local to the global level to address women's issues, empowering women and promoting women's equal rights.

Psychology's study of women has revealed some themes that span cultures and countries, yet women's lived experiences in different cultures can be dramatically different. This Element explores, from a psychological perspective, women's issues in cultural contexts. Beginning with the question of public and private identity (i.e., who 'counts' as a woman), it goes on to examine embodiment, sexuality, reproduction, family roles, economic participation and power, violence, leadership, and feminist activism. It concludes with a brief discussion of women's complicated relationship to culture: as both keepers and sometimes prisoners of cultural traditions - particularly in the context of migration to different cultures. Running through the Element are two general themes: the pervasiveness of a gender hierarchy that often privileges men over women, and the ways in which women's lived experience varies within cultures according to the intersection of gender with other categories that affect expectations, norms, power and privilege.

"The cross-cultural study of women's issues and women's movements, the focus of this book, is fascinating and educational. It tells of women and girls' disadvantage relative to boys and men and how that disadvantage arises from the greater male rights and privilege embedded in cultures, institutions, groups, and minds. Unfortunately, this truth can be disturbing at times. But this book is also uplifting because it is equally about hope, resilience, and the power of people to fight and right social injustices. Throughout the book are many examples of actions to address women's issues and promote gender equality-ranging from the small grassroots effort addressing local women's issues to the use of international law for improving women's status. The global study of women is also about diversity and intersectionality and their importance for understanding the gendered human experience. Gendered discriminations are often heightened by their interaction with other discriminations such as those based on race, class, sexual orientation, age, and gender identity. The experiences and issues of women vary widely based on these and other intersections. Women's experiences as women are also strongly shaped by the particular political, social, and cultural contexts where they live, leading to diversity in women's lives and issues, and in their advocacy and activism. This diversity is true not only in our own country, but also globally. Documenting, studying, and appreciating this variety are hallmarks of global women's and gender studies and one of the major aims of this book. Hope the readers find the global study of women captivating and inspiring. Hope that after reading the book they not only better understand how the world works but that they also feel compelled to do their part for gender equality. Hope that readers will be struck by the scope of gender injustice but equally struck by the scope of women's resistance and the possibilities for change. Hope that the book helps readers better understand and appreciate feminism, diversity, and intersectionality, as they are so often caricatured, ridiculed, and negatively stereotyped. Hope that the book reflects and honors internationally oriented women's and gender studies scholarship and the many women's movements actors and organizations that advocate and serve women"--

This collection brings together an international, multicultural, multilingual, and multidisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners in different media seeking to question and re-theorize the contested terms of our title: “woman,” “writing,” “women’s writing,” and “across.” “Culture” is translated into an open series of interconnected terms and questions. How might one write across national cultures; or across a national and a minority culture; or across disciplines, genres, and media; or across synchronic discourses that are unequal in power; or across present and past discourses or present and future discourses? The collection explores and develops recent feminist, queer, and transgender theory and criticism, and also aesthetic practice. “Writing across” assumes a number of orientations: posthumanist; transtemporal; transnationalist; writing across discourses, disciplines, media, genres, genders; writing across pronouns – he, she, they; writing across literature, non-literary texts, and life. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.

Focusing on seven crucial debates in the field of gender and development, this compilation shows why development policy must respond to cultural differences and illustrates the rewards of doing so.

This Collection Of 18 Essays Deal With The Myriad Aspects Of The Women Question-How Women Have Been Associated In Culture And Myth, How They Write Themselves, And Take Up The Relationships Between Gender, Culture And Narrativie Strategies And Work Through The Writings Of Women (And Also Some Men) Both From India And The Western World. The Essays Relate Simultaneously To Cultural, Literary And Women`S Studies.

First Published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.