Urban space and security are deeply gendered. Women live in and move through the city, but not without risk to their bodily safety as sexual harassment and violence are widespread. Presentations will address dynamics of sexual violence and harassment and women's agency to negotiate these.
Long Abstract:
Urban space is gendered. Women move through the city to work, perform tasks and for leisure - but not without risk to their bodily safety and integrity. Forms of sexual harassment and violence are pervasive and widespread and impact women's health, freedom, productivity, and life opportunities. Young and migrant women, informal workers and those belonging to minority groups, tend to extra vulnerable to sexual violence and harassment. Sustained migration to cities, expanding settlements and growing informal economies are likely to aggravate the gendered insecurities of urban spaces. Faced with weak police and justice institutions, women often need to rely on informal mechanisms to avoid, cope and act on (sexual) violence and harassment. Papers in this panel will address both the material and socio-political driving factors that create vulnerability to sexual harassment and violence - as well as women's agency in negotiating and redressing these.
We invite presentations based on empirical research.
Panellists will upload pre-recorded presentations and watch other presentations in advance of the conference. Convenors will send guiding questions to prepare in advance of the conference to enhance coherence of the discussion, focusing on commonalities and differences across contexts.
The convenors will moderate the discussion. Each presenter will give a 3 minute pitch summarising their key findings and argument (max. of 2 slides allowed) and another 2min in which they address one of the key questions from the convenors. After this, the discussion will be open to the audience.
This article focuses on 'how do #MeToo movement(s) manifest and evolve in China' and aims to find out the specificity of its manifestations in China through analysing two archives and my autoethnography with Chinese situated concepts and theories.
Paper long abstract:
As a victim-survivor and a feminist activist who participated in the #MeToo movement in China, I always have confusion and questions generated from experiences and observations. The limited literature on the #MeToo movements in China rarely applies China situated frameworks, affecting the effectiveness of the understanding. This article focuses on 'how do #MeToo movement(s) manifest and evolve in China' and aims to find out the specificity of its manifestations in China. Through analysing two archives and my autoethnography with He-Yin Zhen's feminist analytical concepts 'nannü' and 'shengji', Confucian moral outlook and Chinese characteristics, I find that the #MeToo movements in China are influenced by the underlying nannü-ed Confucian moral outlook, which contributes to their Chinese characteristics. I also find that there is not one monolithic #MeToo movement in China but many diversified ones with different agendas, and the mobilisation and formation highly depend on the initiating and participating individuals. These findings stress the importance of the historic-cultural context and understanding personal perspectives in studying social movements. This article illustrates that we need to explore more on situated feminist research to reconstruct the feminist studies in the global south context, and that feminist movements need to challenge the historic-cultural context and the dominant romanticising and elitising discourses to develop sustainably.
As mobile workers navigating urban spaces, female taxi and app-based drivers experience danger and vulnerability as part of their work. Through different strategies and managing a dual role as target and guardian of clients, women challenge and resist violence.
Paper long abstract:
Women's lived experience of urban violence is deeply linked to their sense of safety and reflected in their negotiation of everyday violence. But what happens when the urban space is also their workplace? How does the experiences of sexual harassment frame their daily experiences of work and livelihood? How do they resist or respond to this violence? In this paper I explore the experiences of female drivers working in the male-dominated sectors of the taxi and platform-based economy (Uber and Cabify) in the city of Malaga, Spain. Reflecting on 35 semi-structured interviews with female drivers, I explore their experiences as mobile workers navigating urban spaces, and their dual role in the dynamics of violence: as the receiver of violence and sexual harassment from clients and colleagues, and simultaneously as the protector of their female clients, making sure they enjoy violence-free spaces.
Away from the idea of women as passive objects, I state that women deploy a sense of agency creating strategies that help them navigate these challenges. In my paper I explore how, through acts of resilience, reworking and resistance, female drivers create strategies as a way of survival. Often these responses aim at denying the potential danger, but in some transformative responses, some of the participants chose to challenge gender stereotypes by non-conforming to the cultural norms of traditional femininity. I argue that women create these strategies to move away from a sense of 'this city is not for me' towards a sense of empowerment.
While analysing two Facebook based autonomous initiatives: 'Nari': Mohila Bus Service and the Ga Gheshe Daraben Na, this paper not only explores Bangladeshi women's agency to collectively protest sexual harassment but also documents the problems associated with such digital solidarities
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines 'Nari': Mohila Bus Service (NMBS) and Ga Gheshe Daraben Na (GGDN) and explores the extent to which social media is, or is not, compatible with organising for women's activism to address sexual harassment (SH) in Bangladesh. NMBS is a women-only Facebook group created to raise money for launching women-only bus services to the major Dhaka city routes to reduce SH. GGDN is a woman's attempt to raise SH awareness on public buses by designing hairpins and t-shirts containing the tagline: 'Ga Gheshe Daraben Na' ('Don't stand too close'). Using data gathered from ten life-story interviews with these women, this paper demonstrates how the 'free and easy' use of social media to narrate SH experiences enabled these women not only to make such experiences visible but to challenge the hegemonic social norms that discourage women from openly talking about this 'taboo' issue (Clark-Parsons 2021; Thrift 2014). NMBS not only worked as a safe space for many women to openly narrate SH experiences, but their shared SH stories enabled them to create direct, personal ties with other SH victims based on their shared frustration and anger, thus, ensuring affective solidarities to protest SH. These initiatives also created feminist consciousness to collectively challenge sexual harassment. However, online connections created by NMBS and GGDN provided a fairly weak form of solidarity because only a select group of middle-class, mostly Muslim, women in their twenties or early thirties participated in these initiatives and they also lacked experience of grassroots level political organising.
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Sohela Nazneen (Institute of Development Studiesies, University of Sussex)
Short Abstract:
Urban space and security are deeply gendered. Women live in and move through the city, but not without risk to their bodily safety as sexual harassment and violence are widespread. Presentations will address dynamics of sexual violence and harassment and women's agency to negotiate these.
Long Abstract:
Urban space is gendered. Women move through the city to work, perform tasks and for leisure - but not without risk to their bodily safety and integrity. Forms of sexual harassment and violence are pervasive and widespread and impact women's health, freedom, productivity, and life opportunities. Young and migrant women, informal workers and those belonging to minority groups, tend to extra vulnerable to sexual violence and harassment. Sustained migration to cities, expanding settlements and growing informal economies are likely to aggravate the gendered insecurities of urban spaces. Faced with weak police and justice institutions, women often need to rely on informal mechanisms to avoid, cope and act on (sexual) violence and harassment. Papers in this panel will address both the material and socio-political driving factors that create vulnerability to sexual harassment and violence - as well as women's agency in negotiating and redressing these.
We invite presentations based on empirical research.
Panellists will upload pre-recorded presentations and watch other presentations in advance of the conference. Convenors will send guiding questions to prepare in advance of the conference to enhance coherence of the discussion, focusing on commonalities and differences across contexts.
The convenors will moderate the discussion. Each presenter will give a 3 minute pitch summarising their key findings and argument (max. of 2 slides allowed) and another 2min in which they address one of the key questions from the convenors. After this, the discussion will be open to the audience.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 7 July, 2022, -