Browsing by Subject "feminist theory"
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Item Enhancing Women’s Rights and Capabilities: An Intersectional Approach to Gender-Based Violence Prevention(The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, 2011-01) Corser, MaggieDrawing on post-colonial feminist theory, this thesis provides a critical assessment of United Nations (UN) gender-based violence theory and practice. Chapter One provides epistemic critiques of UN agencies’ current theoretical framework, paying particular attention to the concepts of gender, power, and culture. In order to help redress the problems identified in Chapter One, I argue in Chapter Two that we must look to the feminist theory of intersectionality. With its nuanced conceptions of oppression and privilege, intersectionality provides analytic depth to discussions of gender, power, and culture, which I argue can improve the practical effectiveness of gender-based violence prevention efforts. Chapter Three outlines the UN’s shortcomings in practice and illustrates how intersectionality can help remedy the problems identified. Drawing on the case of refugee camps in Ngara and Kibondo Tanzania, I highlight how specific programs and policies informed by the UN’s framework prove inadequate in both decreasing rates of violence and providing services to survivors. Finally, I discuss future implications of an intersectional approach to gender-based violence prevention and how it makes an invaluable contribution to established UN practice.Item “[G]irlish Passion and Vanity”: Female Anger and Sympathy in George Eliot’s Early Novels(2020-05) Kilmer, KerriItem Thinking Past Rights: Towards Feminist Theories of Reparations(The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, 2011-05) Painter, Genevieve RenardThe notion of reparations encompasses debates about the relationship between individual and society, the nature of political community, the meaning of justice, and the impact of rights in social change. In international law, the dominant approach to reparations is based on individual rights. This normative framework is out of step with the understanding of reparations that circulates among many women activists. This paper develops a theoretical approach to justice and reparations that helps to explain the gap between the international normative framework and activist discourses. Based on distributive, communitarian, and critical theories of justice, I argue that reparations can be thought of as rights, symbols, or processes. Approaching reparations as either rights or symbols is rife with problems when approached from an activist and feminist theoretical standpoint. As decisions about reparations programs are and should be determined by the political, social, economic, and cultural context, a blueprint for ‘a feminist reparations program’ is impractical and ill-advised. However, the strongest feminist approach to reparations would depart from an understanding of reparations as a process.