Courage as a moral virtue from a feminist perspective. Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Promotor: Gily Coene
According to the government website, “Sweden has the first feminist government in the world”. Compared to other European countries, the “woman question,” in Sweden, seems to have been treated in a model fashion. What happened, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to propel a geographically remote, sparsely populated and relatively poor country to this position? This question has not been answered in international scholarship, which ...
This research project sets out to analyze Islamist feminism in the Tunisian post-Ben Ali era. It envisages an understanding and assessment of the activism of Islamist women in Tunisia by connecting the formation of a critical theory of ‘Islamist feminism’ to an empirical study of concrete movements and practices in the field.
The challenges of female participants living in violent neighborhoods and female researchers working in challenging circumstances where they can potentially be exposed to violence or harassment have turned our gaze towards rethinking the spaces we navigate in when we conduct participatory research in communities. In community-based projects we visit the communities when and where possible and we leave them again when conditions are suboptimal ...
There are several perspectives on the aetiology of rape: the psychiatric perspective, the feminist perspective, social learning theory, the Darwinian perspective, and integrated theories. Communication between some of those perspective is characterised by hostility. It is the aim of this research project to analyse why this is the case, and to what extend an integration between those explanatory models is feasible.
This project explores the interplay between second, third, and fourth-wave feminist theory and five female fashion designers working actively between 1960 to 2010. We focus on theorists and designers born in the 1930s and 1940s in order to examine the historical connections, interactions, development, and evolution of these two groups. Through the application of feminist theories to female fashion designers and their designs, we aim to show ...
The historiography on post-1970 women’s movements in Dutch-speaking Belgium lacks a focus on (anti-)racism. This research broadens this perspective by using the framework of intersectionality and transnational feminism as a critical inquiry, while simultaneously respecting the genealogy of both frameworks which were inherently connected to aspirations of social justice. This is translated to three interrelated research objectives that are ...
This research analyses racial power dynamics in feminist activism and gendered power dynamics in ethnocultural activism through an intersectional perspective (1970-2010). By conducting empirical research, it places the case-study of Dutch-speaking Belgium in the supranational debate on intersectionality. The analysis is done through a critical discourse analysis using both archival and oral sources.
In what is framed as a "new" kind of post-Fordist niche, called the reproductive bio-economy, organised around the flow of reproductive materials and organs, women are increasingly commercialising their bodies by working as oocyte vendors, surrogate mothers or tissue providers. There is fundamental disagreement among scholars and policy makers on how the bio-economy should be analysed and organised. Market critics propose a gift economy ...