Welcome to the research guide for WGS 201H, Women in the World.
The best place to start as you begin thinking about and researching women internationally is the resource AtoZ The World found under the Finding Articles box. Here you can explore various aspects of women in any country and get a nice foundation on the culture, politics, economics, etc. of a country. The other resources under Finding Articles will be helpful to search for supporting articles.
The websites listed will provide valuable data on women worldwide and as you do your own searching and find additional websites that are useful, please feel free to pass them along to me, Nancy Weissman, for inclusion on this guide.
The same is true for the videos and multimedia; these are suggestions which may be useful or lead to relevant and useful information. Kanopy is a terrific resource, but you must establish an account prior watching a video, just following the prompts on the site.
Email me or schedule a one on one online appointment if you need any assistance.
Brick by Brick
After a twenty-five-year career spent fighting for women's rights around the globe at the expense of time with her family, Karen Sherman looked around and realized she didn't really know her children and felt little connection to her husband. With her world--work, marriage, family--crashing down, she made the rash decision to move to Rwanda with her three sons, an experiment she dubbed "our year of living dangerously." While her boys attended the international school, she worked to better the lives of women survivors of war. But as the survivors--Josephine, Ange, Grace, Euphraise, Debora, Yvette, and Teresa--shared their stories of grit and determination, building lives and raising families despite the brutal challenges of war, genocide, and inequality, Karen began to see how her work was connected to the abuse in her own past, and how it was preventing her from becoming the woman she wanted to be. The struggles of these survivors, she realized, were the struggles of women everywhere, regardless of place or circumstance: striving to balance work and family, fighting for real options and choices, trying to make their voices heard. The strength of these women helped Karen find her own way through conflict zones and battles with corrupt politicians. In the end, the journey brings her home to her family and to a renewed commitment to fighting for women around the world to live free from violence and abuse, in peace and with dignity.
Footbinding As Fashion
Previous studies of the practice of footbinding in imperial China have theorized that it expressed ethnic identity or that it served an economic function. By analyzing the popularity of footbinding in different places and times, Footbinding as Fashion investigates the claim that early Qing (1644-1911) attempts by Manchu rulers to ban footbinding made it a symbol of anti-Manchu sentiment and Han identity and led to the spread of the practice throughout all levels of society. Detailed case studies of Taiwan, Hebei, and Liaoning provinces exploit rich bodies of previously neglected ethnographic reports, economic surveys, and rare censuses of footbinding to challenge the significance of sedentary female labor and ethnic rivalries as factors leading to the hegemony of the footbinding fashion. The study concludes that, independently of identity politics and economic factors, variations in local status hierarchies and elite culture coupled with status competition and fear of ridicule for not binding girls' feet best explain how a culturally arbitrary fashion such as footbinding could attain hegemonic status.
A History of Islam in 21 Women
Khadija was the first believer, to whom the Prophet Muhammad often turned for advice. At a time when strongmen quickly seized power from any female Muslim ruler, Arwa of Yemen reigned alone for five decades. In nineteenth-century Russia, Mukhlisa Bubi championed the rights of women and girls, and became the first Muslim woman judge in modern history. After the Gestapo took down a Resistance network in Paris, British spy Noor Inayat Khan found herself the only undercover radio operator left in that city. In this unique history, Hossein Kamaly celebrates the lives and achievements of twenty-one extraordinary women in the story of Islam, from the formative days of the religion to the present.
When Women Rule the Court
Women Policing Across the Globe
Women Policing across the Globe provides a cross-cultural comparison of the integration of women in policing across the globe, paying special attention to the unique contributions that women make to the field, along with the shared challenges and resistance they face. Individual chapters within the book provide students with a snapshot of the status of women in modern police agencies in the countries of the United States, Kuwait, China, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, and Taiwan. However, shared issues and successes of women police in many more countries worldwide are discussed throughout the entire book. This book allows students to explore the different origins of entry, specialized roles, their experiences of resistance, and effects of historical events that have shaped the experiences of modern women police from across the world. The authors discuss the new gains women are making, despite the obstacles they face, and ways they are transforming how policing is done every day. And, finally, this book closes with collective issues and successes faced by women police worldwide.
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