Like most Canadian citizens, I was delighted to see the back end of our former Prime Minister Harper as he conceded defeat to the Liberal Party's Justin Trudeau. Although I've felt slightly disconnected watching both the campaign and the reaction to Trudeau's win from...
One might think that looking to the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and the recent spate of police brutality against African American males, particularly Michael Brown and Eric Garner, are...
What I remember most about my post-grad Gender and Politics seminar were the extensive discussions we had about having babies. It was 2004, and debates about babies vs careers, and whether women...
(Note: This post is cross-posted at The Research Centre in International Relations at King's College, London's Blog) Feminist theorists have long made and substantiated the argument that gender...
The sailor (George Mendosa) and nurse (Greta Zimmer Friedman) depicted in this iconic photo snapped moments after the announcement that World War II had ended turned out to be complete strangers, and apparently Greta Friedman, the nurse, wasn't kissing back: Mendosa: "It was the moment. You come back from the Pacific, and finally, the war ends,' Mendonsa told CBS. 'The excitement of the war being over, plus I had a few drinks. So when I saw the nurse, I grabbed her, and I kissed her." Friedman: "I did not see him approaching, and before I know it, I was in this vice grip. That man was very...
I'm pretty sure this is a Soviet poster for International Women's Day.Are IR scholars relevant to policy? IR scholar and famous policymaker Anne-Marie Slaughter addresses that puzzle, which principally concerns only IR scholars, in a roundabout way in a new article in The Atlantic asking whether women can "have it all"--a puzzle that concerns a great many more people. She also addresses these concerns in a follow-up Q&A on The New York Times Web site.I mention this because although I am not demographically directly interested (being neither a woman, nor a parent, nor, for that matter,...
One of the most unsettling findings of our media and radicalisation research was the way in which the suffering of certain individual women is turned into a cause by radical Islamic groups that leads to violence by men in those women’s names. The availability of digital media, combined with a certain doctrinal entrepreneurialism by those using religion to justify political violence, has resulted in the widespread dissemination of amateur video clips depicting a specific woman’s plight and calling for reprisals. If you want to understand the link between online propaganda and offline action,...
I did not make these to destroy feminism.Duck readers, I have a confession. I bake cupcakes. Thousands of them. I love doing it, I love icing them, I love decorating them and I really like eating them.This is not something that I would typically share with a blog on international politics. Normally I write about things that blow up or try to calmly argue that twitter is not going to stop a war lord. But you see I am compelled. I am compelled to write in defence of cupcakes for International Women’s day.Apparently some people think my love of cupcakes makes me a bad feminist: real feminists...
Naomi Wolf recently posted a blog on Al Jazeera entitled "America's Reactionary Feminists: what do Palin and Bachmann have that make them so appealing to the American public?" I don't doubt that this is an interesting question. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the confusing and simplistic answer Wolf provided- particularly the discussion around right wing feminism. It may be worth taking a step back to ask why female politicians who do not identify as feminists continually get categorized as one. Surely we must be beyond the 'woman=feminist' discussion? Sadly, apparently no. First, the...
The CEO of the Employers & Manufacturers Association, an association that promotes New Zealand businesses, Alasdair Thompson sparked a heated debate last week when, during a discussion on equal pay, he publicly claimed that women’s productivity was impacted by their periods. He claimed that women “take the most sick leave” and explained “ you know, once a month they have sick problems. Not all women, but some do.” He later went on to say “Men and women are fortunately different. Women have babies. Women take leave when they have their babies.” In a subsequent interview he claimed: “Some...
It seems the seasons, and our attentions, have shifted from the Arab spring to the summer of sex scandals. May 2011 has been a notable month for high profile affairs and sexual indiscretions (let’s use this term loosely for now). Dominique Strauss Kahn’s (DSK) attempted rape charges, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love child, Anthony Weiner’s alleged tweeted self portrait, and the developments in Silvio Berlusconi’s trial for sex with an underage female have all occurred within a few weeks of one another, but does that warrant the tendency lump these scandals together? It may be that all four are...
Do the responses to the plight of Dorothy Parvaz, a journalist for Al Jazeera English who was detained in Syria and Iran for nearly 3 weeks, show continued resistance to female journalists pursuing particular types of stories?Parvaz flew to Syria to gather information that could add to what little is known about local protests and government violence. She was arrested at the airport in Damascus and taken to a detention center- Parvaz likened it to a mini version of Guantanamo Bay. Three days after her arrival in Syria she was extradited to Iran as a suspected spy before being released...