Converging Crises and the Cost of Exclusion: Unveiling the Invisible Women of Sri Lanka's Economy

In Sri Lanka, womens labor force participation has never exceeded 35% in over three decades. As of 2022, the country was ranked 110 out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forums Gender Gap Index. The gaps in womens participation in the formal economy alongside womens limited political empowerment are two leading causes for the country to be lagging in such global gender equality indicators. At a large cost to the economy, the existence of archaic gender norms that promulgate womens unpaid care work often exclude women from the formal labor force. This paper dissects the socio-economic and socio-political factors that lead to the invisibility of women in Sri Lankas economy, while seeking to understand how such underlying causes have been aggravated within the precarity of the post-pandemic context. It is important, now more than ever, to recognize the invisibility of women in Sri Lankas formal economy, while bringing about a transformative vision with a multi-pronged approach to address existing gaps and challenges. With reference to key principles of feminist economics, including the theoretical foundations of Claudia Goldin, Nancy Folbre, and Diane Elson, among others, the paper will make a case for inclusivity and intersectionality in policy recommendations aimed at encouraging womens entry, active engagement, contribution, and retention in Sri Lankas economy. The paper reaches a conclusion that when women lead, participate, and benefit equally in all aspects of life, societies and economies will thrive, thereby contributing to sustainable development and inclusive economic growth.

Healing the healer: Recipes of self-care

The idea of self-care has been a central theme more recently with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people are seeking ways of existing that are about caring for self and others. As drama therapists and artists, the need for us to practise this care with and for others is even more important as we carry the burdens of stories and trauma of our clients. Drama therapy as a mental health modality is suited to address and offer strategies of what care and self-care especially for practitioners might look like. But what exactly are the traits of self-care and how does it link to our ethical caring practice of therapy and theatre-making? In this article, we argue that self-care needs to be redeemed from the individual focus and to be more about community. We offer recipes as performances of communal creation and a model of self-care that occurs with and for others. These recipes are meditations inspired by encounters with ourselves, our loved ones and our past. The article is presented in recipes and conversation form to emphasize the idea that caring cannot occur in isolation outside of others. We look at the moral imperative of rituals of care that have existed in our lives and how these can be brought to the fore to become shared knowledge. We share our experiences of growing up in a community of women who also practise kindness and love. We hope the techniques suggested deepen the existing conversation on centralizing Black women's knowledge systems and healing practices within the drama therapy canon. We do not assume to speak for all Black women everywhere in the world;we write to centre our experiences as Black women who are drama therapists who are accountable to other women. We encourage readers to create their own recipes of what community-centred self-care practices might look like. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

The Challenges and Joys of Publicly Engaged Sociology

In this essay, I lay out my motivations for doing publicly engaged sociology, emphasizing both the joys and the challenges of this work, and some of the key lessons that I have learned. I explore my attempts to impact policy at the federal level and the local level of my university, as well as efforts to shape changes across academia during the COVID-19 crisis. I have found it meaningful to be working toward all of these changes. Moreover, making sense of the spaces that I inhabit, collecting data, exploring patterns, and connecting it to social theory, has deepened my thinking as a sociologist, and bettered my research more broadly. © 2023 Eastern Sociological Society.

Feminist Governance in the European Parliament: The Political Struggle over the Inclusion of Gender in the EU's COVID-19 Response

The research objective of this article is to analyze the European Parliament's response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of feminist governance. Feminist governance can either play a role in ensuring the inclusion of a gender perspective in crisis responses, or, quite the opposite, crises may weaken or sideline feminist governance. The empirical analysis focuses on two aspects of feminist governance: (1) a dedicated gender equality body and (2) gender mainstreaming. In addition to assessing the effectiveness of feminist governance, the analysis sheds light on the political struggles behind the policy positions. The article argues that feminist governance in the European Parliament was successful in inserting a gender perspective into the COVID-19 response. The article pinpoints the effects of the achievements of the European Parliament's Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee and gender mainstreaming on gendering the pandemic crisis response.

#ButNotMaternity: Analysing Instagram posts of reproductive politics under pandemic crisis

In this article, we perform a thematic analysis of a sample of 70 #ButNotMaternity Instagram posts. #ButNotMaternity is a hashtag that emerged in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic whereby the public, healthcare workers and campaigners shared experiences and concerns about pandemic maternity care restrictions and their disproportionate disadvantages for pregnant women. In the article, we analyse four themes that emerged from our thematic analysis – Individual experiences, loneliness and overcoming adversity, Voicing anger and absurdity, Mobilising anger and calls to action and Coordinated activism. Thinking about #ButNotMaternity in the context of ‘freelance feminism', our article has a twofold aim. First, we explore the concept of ‘freelance feminism' through #ButNotMaternity, asking to what extent this campaign draws from freelance tactics. Second, we use the hashtag to illuminate maternity inequality and modes of resistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through our thematic analysis, we argue that while ‘freelance feminism' might be becoming hegemonic as a dominant mode of organising feminist activism and resistance, inspired by Malik et al. (2020), we also showcase how creative campaigns are potential places where collective action, structural critique and resistance may emerge. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of European Journal of Cultural Studies is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The entanglements of the law, digital technologies and domestic violence in Seattle

This paper draws on a community-based participatory action research project located in Seattle - before and during the COVID-19 pandemic - to examine the unanticipated impact that the pandemic has had on reducing barriers for survivors of domestic violence seeking protection through the legal system. We draw on interviews with survivors and victim advocates, along with autoethnographic participant observation during Domestic Violence Protection Order (DVPO) hearings, to trace survivors' experiences navigating the DVPO process before and after its transition from an analogue to digital system. We situate this research at the intersection of legal and digital geographic scholarship to analyze how the law and digital technologies reinforce the spatial operation of power and exclusion, while they simultaneously provide emancipatory potential for women's experiences of security, legal subjectivity and emotional personhood. By focusing on how the courts' transition to a digital system affects the emotional personhood and legal subjectivity of domestic violence survivors, this paper advances feminist calls within legal and digital geographies scholarship that encourage more sustained engagement with feminist thought to understand the varied effects of the law and digital technologies – respectively – on gendered bodies.

Notes from the portal: Feminist educational practices in/post- pandemic art and design classrooms

This chapter addresses post-secondary arts educators' need to apply intersectional feminist educational pedagogies and methodologies while navigating during and post-COVID-19. By deconstructing oppressive pre-pandemic educational ideologies within the liminal portal of COVID-19, students and faculty can embrace this new state of change. Feminist educational practices can steady educators in this transitory time as it historically values and utilizes unease, flexibility, multiplicity, and self-reflection. Specific classroom approaches and examples highlight how and why feminist practices can create inner awareness, community, and transformational change. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. All rights reserved.

Representation of women in the Basque press: informative pieces related to health during states of alarm (COVID-19).

This article presents a quantitative analysis with a gender perspective of the informative pieces related to health in Basque newspapers. The main objective is to analyze the representativeness and visibility of women during states of alarm in the four mainstream newspapers with the largest circulation in the Basque Country. The results show that, in general, the presence of men is greater than that of women. There is a gender gap in favor of men in the use of information sources and when choosing the protagonists of articles. However, there is also fair data regarding the authorship of the informative pieces and photographs. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR] Este artículo presenta un análisis cuantitativo con perspectiva de género de las piezas informativas relacionadas con la salud en los diarios vascos. El objetivo principal es analizar la representatividad y la visibilidad de las mujeres durante los estados de alarma con motivo del COVID-19 en los cuatro periódicos generalistas de mayor tirada de Euskadi. Los resultados muestran que, en general, la presencia de los hombres es mayor que la de las mujeres. Existe una brecha de género a favor de los hombres en el uso de las fuentes informativas y a la hora de elegir a los protagonistas de los artículos. Sin embargo, hay datos equitativos en cuanto a la autoría de las piezas informativas y las fotografías. (Spanish) [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Zer: Journal of Communication Studies / Revista de Estudios de Comunicacion / Komunikazio Ikasketen Aldizkaria is the property of Universidad del Pais Vasco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The hybrid political role of feminism on Twitter during COVID-19: SISMA Mujer in Colombia.

Twitter proved to be strategic for the dissemination of information, and for the activation of feminist social movements. This article identifies the patterns of representation around feminist movements on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed the discourse around a Colombian NGO known as Sisma Mujer, in a corpus of 4415 tweets posted during the first year of COVID-19. The results showed five significant topic categories: gender-based violence, women in peacebuilding, women's human rights, gender equality, and social protest. This activity re-contextualized the online activism of this movement into a new, hybrid role with important political implications for the social movement. Our analysis highlights this role by pointing out how feminist activists framed gender-based violence to generate a discourse on Twitter.

Performing feminist research: creative tactics for communicating COVID-19, gender, and higher education research

Presenting research findings outside of the form of a traditional research report requires different modes of making and communicating. This paper offers an account of how The #FEAS Report, a satirical news video, was made to communicate the findings from interviews and a survey as part of the mixed-methods study, Sexism, Higher Education, and COVID-19: The Australian Perspective to a wider public. Three creative tactics for research communication were used: DIY aesthetics, humour, and situated bodies. These communication tactics enabled the researchers to think differently about what research findings mean, and how to articulate them in ways that are intelligible. The paper shows how these tactics worked to bring findings to audiences beyond the academy and ask audiences within the academy to think differently about research reporting and knowledge communication. The paper considers how performing research in this way generates different conversations that compliment those started by more common ways of presenting research findings, and most importantly, how crucial it is for feminist researchers to make space for the creative within contemporary higher education.

List-keepers and other carrier bag stories: Academic mothers' (in)visible labor during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted familiar rhythms of work and life when academic women from the United States sheltered-in-place in their homes. The pandemic brought forth challenges which accentuated that caregiving with little or no support disproportionately affected mothers' abilities to navigate their new lives inside the home, where work and caregiving abruptly collided. This article takes on the (in)visible labor of academic mothers during this time-the labor mothers saw and viscerally experienced, yet that which was often unseen/unexperienced by others. Using Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory as a conceptual framework, the authors engage with interviews of 54 academic mothers through a feminist-narrative lens. They craft stories of carrying (in)visible labor, isolation, simultaneity, and list-keeping as they navigate the mundaneness of everyday pandemic home/work/life. Through unrelenting responsibilities and expectations, they each find ways to carry it all, as they carry on.

Desire, Darkness and Hope: Theology in a Time of Impasse. Engaging the Thought of Constance Fitzgerald, OCD ed. by Laurie Cassidy and M. Shawn Copeland (review)

Ever since the publication of her 1984 article, "Impasse and Dark Night" in the volume Living with Apocalypse that brought the contemplative vision of the Carmelite tradition to bear upon intractable contemporary societal issues (the dark night not only of the soul but of the world), the writings of Sr. John of the Cross's delineation of this dark night involves a purifying movement from a selfhood in which love is entangled, complex and unfree through a joyless darkness in which the self is stripped of its former identity and becomes transformed in union with God and others. In the spirit of M. Shawn Copeland's apt and memorable introductory characterization of the work of theology as "rowing toward God in an anguished world," these writers tackle the impasses that paralyze our society today: white supremacy (Laurie Cassidy);the Covid 19 pandemic (Maria Teresa Morgan and Susie Paulik Babka);the preferential option for the poor (Roberto Goizueta);the global climate crisis (Margaret R. Pfeil);the de-colonializing of faith and society (Alex Mikulich);racial [in]justice (Brain Massingale);grace in a violent world (Andrew Prevot);and preaching the wisdom of the Cross (Mary Catherine Hilkert).

Imagining Feminist Academic Collaborations Beyond Exceptionalized Crises

In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, universities and colleges across the United States began to unroll plans to shift residential teaching to remote or virtual learning environments. As feminist scholars primarily located in the US academy, we are invested in mapping longer genealogies of crises in the settler-colonial US academy, delineating how racist, imperial, and hierarchical structures that are replicated and reinstated by the academy formulate continuous and ongoing discursive and material violence towards racialized, classed, and gendered minorities. By centering what we refer to as feminist modalities of care tthat center collective, communal, and transnational feminist interventions, this article challenges the imperatives of academic success and survival beyond the logics of emergency and crisis. We explore the interlinked transnational discourses of emergency and crisis, mapping their travels and circulations in local and global academic networks in ways that reproduce systemic inequalities and the politics of value that inform power hierarchies within the academy. Energized by a refusal to normalize crises, this essay is invested in showing how feminist interventions, here explored under three modalities, including research and teaching collaborations and coalitions that take place inside and beyond the academy and against its competitive logics, can challenge the imperatives of academic survival premised on notions of individualistic care, productivity, and worth.

Building capacities for oriented innovation: Argentina's response to COVID-19 from a gender perspective.

The pandemic tested the resilience of public systems, as governments faced the challenge of rapidly adapting their policies and practices. In this context, Argentina was recognized as one of the few countries that managed to mainstream a gender perspective to reach the most vulnerable populations, showing adaptive capacities and strategic orientation. This article seeks to document, systematize, and rethink the strategies deployed by the Argentine government in terms of mission-oriented innovation policies. The objective is to understand which capabilities are key to address complex social issues in the Global South and how they can be nurtured. Through a theoretical framework that articulates the literature on "dynamic public sector capacities” and "state capacities” in Latin America and the application of a qualitative methodology (case study), we find that state capacities were strengthened by reconfiguring pre-existing resources based on a government project, collective leadership, and a series of institutional and political innovations in the context of the rise of regional feminisms. This experience, which has earned Argentina global recognition, offers important lessons for addressing social challenges through innovation policies, the institutionalization of popular movement demands, and collaborations for resilient systems. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR] La pandemia puso a prueba la resiliencia de los sistemas públicos, pues los Gobiernos enfrentaron el desafío de adaptar rápidamente sus políticas y prácticas. En ese contexto, Argentina fue reconocida como uno de los pocos países que logró transversalizar la perspectiva de género para alcanzar a las poblaciones más vulnerables, mostrando capacidades de adaptación y orientación estratégica. En este artículo se busca captar, sistematizar y repensar –en el contexto de las políticas de innovación orientadas por misiones– las estrategias desplegadas por el Gobierno argentino. El objetivo es comprender qué capacidades resultan claves para el abordaje de problemáticas sociales complejas en el Sur Global y cómo estas pueden nutrirse. A través de un marco teórico que articula la literatura sobre "capacidades dinámicas del sector público” y "capacidades estatales” en América Latina, y la aplicación de una metodología cualitativa (estudio de caso), encontramos que las capacidades estatales se fortalecieron reconfigurando recursos preexistentes a partir de un proyecto de gobierno, liderazgos colectivos, y una serie de innovaciones institucionales y políticas en el contexto del auge de los feminismos regionales. Esta experiencia, que le ha valido a Argentina el reconocimiento mundial, ofrece importantes lecciones para abordar los retos sociales mediante políticas de innovación, la institucionalización de las demandas de los movimientos populares y las colaboraciones para lograr sistemas resilientes. (Spanish) [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Íconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales is the property of FLACSO Ecuador (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Editorial Comment: Feminist Methodologies at Play

Discourse concerning the Atlanta Spa Shootings, which happened around the time that this issue first started to come together in March of 2021, has renewed the urgency of thinking about performance and feminism together.1 Given that this issue's publication roughly coincides with the first anniversary of those murders, the violent events in Atlanta have loomed in the background of the editorial process. [...]although the essays in this issue address quite distinct forms of performance and paratheatrical phenomena from state surveillance to fan groups to online participatory audiences, all of the essays use feminist methodologies either explicitly or implicitly. [...]this editorial highlights some of their convergences to think through how the interventions of each author might speak to a feminist knowledge project that is critical in this historical moment. Fans watch events transpire in Wanda's magically created world, which is itself surveyed in the narrative by an extra-governmental agency (elaborated in the comic books if not so much in the television miniseries itself);these source materials give Wanda and Vision their names and provide many backstories for the roster of secondary characters. Barnette suggests that the series also provided a platform to see the ethical conundrums of real-life individuals whose positions of power grant their words authority;witness former president Donald Trump inciting the attack on the Capitol.

Decolonizing Time, Knowledge, and Disability on the Tenure Clock

We consider the tenure clock's enmeshment in the neoliberal academy's settler colonial and ableist modes of organizing labor and valuing knowledge, modes in turn informed by heteropatriarchal spatiotemporal logics. The tenure clock in the settler academy relies on labor performed by those positioned outside of its time—such as those in temporary or semi-temporary positions, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Our motivation in tracing these logics and formulating feminist strategies to undo them stems directly from observing "faculty with disabilities" at our university struggling against the tenure clock;as well as seemingly abled women faculty, faculty of color, and contingent faculty, who have strained against the academic clock and ended up debilitated in the process. We articulate ways in which more collaborative understandings of university culture and knowledge production might serve to challenge the peculiar temporalities produced by the tenure clock. Listening and learning at the intersections of feminist, Indigenous, and disability studies scholarship teaches us to work toward imagining a different approach to tenure, and from there, the way to a different academy.

Attunement in the Cracks: Feminist Collaboration and the University as Broken Machine

This essay takes the form of a dialogue between Natalie Loveless and Carrie Smith, both professors at a large western-Canadian research-intensive university undergoing restructuring prompted by budget cuts. Together they ask how feminist collaboration can work to resculpt academic political spaces. Though both agree that large-scale action is needed, they also argue for the value of insurgent, modest, local modes of collaborative resistance that operate in the cracks of the neoliberal university. Beginning from their experience navigating the dual threats of COVID-19 and radical budget cuts as professors in academic leadership positions, they make a claim for an anti-racist, feminist university that is responsive in its capacity to nurture generosity, care, and creativity. Together they invite readers to be attentive to the conditions necessary for any true critical collaboration to take place, listening for and attuning to what Sarah Sharma has called "brokenness" (2020)—those places where things are not working from the perspectives of patriarchal power and where those committed to feminist anti-racist/ableist/speciesist university spaces might want to linger.

How to Deal with a Bully: Debility, Non-Production, and Radical Care

This article examines how resistance toward capitalism's temporal bullying is performed in contemporary art and activism. It addresses the relationship between creativity, institutions, and empowerment. Building on the conceptual work of Croatian artist Mladen Stilinović (1947–2016), the article explores several aesthetic presentations of resistive temporalities we identify as non-production. The case studies of non-production herein marshaled affirm a performance of resistance that centers discussion of radicality in self-consciously interdependent care networks, ostensibly available to all disabled and nondisabled individuals. This care ethic claps back at the idea of self-optimization and fiduciary endurance amidst economic regimes of exploitation as virtuous. In the place of 'wellness,' this article affirms new directions in care and mutual aid, as premised on queer, crip, and feminist portrayals of disability praxis and pedagogy.

Janna Thompson: Philosopher and Sleuth

Janna Thompson, feminist, social justice advocate, and internationally esteemed professor of philosophy, died on 24 June 2022, as a result of multiple brain tumours. [...]the importance of apologies for past wrongs: she observes that authorised apologies on behalf of communities have a range of notable features, but their main point is to "signal that a nation or organization repudiates injustices of the past and is committed to just dealings with groups that were persecuted or oppressed" (Thompson, "Apologising," 2020: 1041). [...]in accordance with her lifelong commitment to social justice, the novel explores the loss of human rights and the low social status blithely assigned to older people by institutions, governments, and culture. Along with the shocking and disproportionate Covid death rate among aged care residents, the epidemic highlighted the abuse of human rights with respect to residents' loss of liberty: they were locked up in their rooms, locked away from families and friends, and locked down in unsafe environments. In her pivotal essays, Sarah Holland-Batt, an award-winning poet, academic and aged care activist,3 has damned the Federal government's failure to prepare Australia's residential aged care facilities for Covid outbreaks (September, 2020), and has exposed the immorality of current Australian society: "We treat older people as a separate and subhuman class, frequently viewing them as a burden on their families, the community and the state" (May, 2020).

La literatura especulativa en tiempos de pandemia y ecofeminismo

En consecuencia, nos aferramos a la idea de lo especulativo, y se resignifican problemáticas que en la actual pandemia adquieren otras dimensiones, como las formas de habitar el mundo, los usos y la organización del espacio doméstico y del espacio social, nuevas cartografías, sistemas políticos y de control, pestes y plagas, debacles ecológicas y sanitarias. Dada la importancia que este grupo y sus propuestas han tenido en el contexto literario y ecofeminista en los últimos años, invitamos a Claudia Aboaf a escribir el epílogo de este dossier para dar cuenta de las ideas centrales de su mirada. (222) Esta es una cuestión que creíamos que se revisaría con mayor fuerza como consecuencia de la pandemia;no obstante, solo se puede observar un aumento de la conciencia ecológica en algunos sectores, que no ha llegado a impactar aún a gran escala. El artículo de Lucía Vazquez, "Catástrofe y vínculos: inundación y desertificación en Gongue, 'Quema,' El rey del agua y El ojo y la flor" propone un recorrido por estas obras distópicas para explorar en ellas los modos en que se imagina la catástrofe ecológica y las consecuentes transformaciones del espacio social e individual.