French Women in Politics: Writing Power

French Women in Politics: Writing Power
Author: Raylene L. Ramsay
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781571810823

Although more women in France have entered political life than ever before, the fact remains that there are fewer women representatives in the French parliament than there were after the Second World War. In a new and original approach, the author presents an overview and analysis of the emerging body of text by or on women who have held high political office in France. The argument is that writing about women and politics has not just described or reflected women's slow but now substantial entry into political life; it has played a major part in shaping the parity debate and its outcomes. Interviews with political women, such as Huguette Bouchardeau, Simone Veil or Edith Cresson, inserted in the text, demonstrate the emergence and circulation of a new common discourse focused on the issue of whether women in politics make or should make a difference. A close reading of the various texts examined in this book and their connection to new public counter-discourses in France suggest that a re-writing of power is indeed occurring.

French Women in Politics: Writing Power

French Women in Politics: Writing Power
Author: Raylene L. Ramsay
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781571810816

Although more women in France have entered political life than ever before, the fact remains that there are fewer women representatives in the French parliament than there were after the Second World War. In a new and original approach, the author presents an overview and analysis of the emerging body of text by or on women who have held high political office in France. The argument is that writing about women and politics has not just described or reflected women's slow but now substantial entry into political life; it has played a major part in shaping the parity debate and its outcomes. Interviews with political women, such as Huguette Bouchardeau, Simone Veil or Edith Cresson, inserted in the text, demonstrate the emergence and circulation of a new common discourse focused on the issue of whether women in politics make or should make a difference. A close reading of the various texts examined in this book and their connection to new public counter-discourses in France suggest that a re-writing of power is indeed occurring.

Women and Power at the French Court, 1483-1563

Women and Power at the French Court, 1483-1563
Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Courts
ISBN: 9789462983427

Women and Power at the French Court, 1483--1563 explores the ways in which a range of women " as consorts, regents, mistresses, factional power players, attendants at court, or as objects of courtly patronage " wielded power in order to advance individual, familial, and factional agendas at the early sixteenth-century French court. Spring-boarding from the burgeoning scholarship of gender, the political, and power in early modern Europe, the collection provides a perspective from the French court, from the reigns of Charles VIII to Henri II, a time when the French court was a renowned center of culture and at which women played important roles. Crossdisciplinary in its perspectives, these essays by historians, art and literary scholars investigate the dynamic operations of gendered power in political acts, recognized status as queens and regents, ritualized behaviors such as gift-giving, educational coteries, and through social networking, literary and artistic patronage, female authorship, and epistolary strategies.

French Women in Politics: Writing Power

French Women in Politics: Writing Power
Author: Raylene L. Ramsay
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785334913

Although more women in France have entered political life than ever before, the fact remains that there are fewer women representatives in the French parliament than there were after the Second World War. In a new and original approach, the author presents an overview and analysis of the emerging body of text by or on women who have held high political office in France. The argument is that writing about women and politics has not just described or reflected women's slow but now substantial entry into political life; it has played a major part in shaping the parity debate and its outcomes. Interviews with political women, such as Huguette Bouchardeau, Simone Veil or Edith Cresson, inserted in the text, demonstrate the emergence and circulation of a new common discourse focused on the issue of whether women in politics make or should make a difference. A close reading of the various texts examined in this book and their connection to new public counter-discourses in France suggest that a re-writing of power is indeed occurring.

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales
Author: Bronwyn Reddan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2020-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1496223934

Love is a key ingredient in the stereotypical fairy-tale ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. This romantic formula continues to influence contemporary ideas about love and marriage, but it ignores the history of love as an emotion that shapes and is shaped by hierarchies of power including gender, class, education, and social status. This interdisciplinary study questions the idealization of love as the ultimate happy ending by showing how the conteuses, the women writers who dominated the first French fairy-tale vogue in the 1690s, used the fairy-tale genre to critique the power dynamics of courtship and marriage. Their tales do not sit comfortably in the fairy-tale canon as they explore the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of love and marriage on the lives of their heroines. Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses' scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the "right" way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.

Muslim Women’s Political Participation in France and Belgium

Muslim Women’s Political Participation in France and Belgium
Author: Amina Easat-Daas
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2020-10-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030487253

This book outlines the principal motivations, opportunities and barriers to Muslim women’s political participation in France and francophone Belgium. Easat-Daas draws on in-depth comparative contextual analysis along with semi-structured interview material with women from France and Belgium who self-identify as Muslim and are active in a variety of modes of political participation, such European Parliamentarians, Senators, councilwomen, trade-union activists and those engaged in grass-roots political movements. This provides an alternative framing of Muslim women, removed from the tired and often exaggerated stereotypes that portray them as passive objects or sources of threat, instead highlighting their remarkable resilience and consistent determination. Through exploring the intersecting fault lines of racial, Islamophobic and gendered struggles of Muslim women in these two cases, this book also sheds new light on the role of ‘European Islam’, political opportunity structures, secularism and Muslim women’s dress.

The Politics of the Veil

The Politics of the Veil
Author: Joan Wallach Scott
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2010-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691147981

In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all. Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions. The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony.

Ukraine's Revolt, Russia's Revenge

Ukraine's Revolt, Russia's Revenge
Author: Christopher M. Smith
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2022-03-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815739257

“This firsthand account of contemporary history is key to understanding Russia's latest assault on its neighbor."—USA Today An eyewitness account by a U.S. diplomat of Russia’s brazen attempt to undo the democratic revolution in Ukraine Told from the perspective of a U.S. diplomat in Kyiv, this book is the true story of Ukraine’s anti-corruption revolution in 2013—14, Russia’s intervention and invasion of that nation, and the limited role played by the United States. It puts into a readable narrative the previously unpublished reporting by seasoned U.S. diplomatic and military professionals, a wealth of information on Ukrainian high-level and street-level politics, a broad analysis of the international context, and vivid descriptions of people and places in Ukraine during the EuroMaidan Revolution. The book also counters Russia’s disinformation narratives about the revolution and America’s role in it. While focusing on a single country during a dramatic three-year period, the book’s universal themes—among them, truth versus lies, democracy versus autocracy—possess a broader urgency for our times. That urgency burns particularly hot for the United States and all other countries that are the targets of Russia's cyber warfare and other forms of political skullduggery. From his posting in U.S. Embassy Kyiv (2012–14), the author observed and reported first-hand on the EuroMaidan Revolution that wrested power from corrupt pro-Kremlin Ukrainian autocrat Viktor Yanukovych. The book also details Russia’s attempt to abort the Ukrainian revolution through threats, economic pressure, lies, and intimidation. When all of that failed, the Kremlin exacted revenge by annexing Ukraine's territory of Crimea and fomenting and sustaining a hybrid war in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 13,000 people and continues to this day. Ukraine's Revolt, Russia’s Revenge is based on the author’s own observations and the multitude of reports of his Embassy colleagues who were eyewitnesses to a crucial event in contemporary history.

Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944-1954

Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944-1954
Author: Kelly Ricciardi Colvin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2017-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350031135

The enfranchisement of women in Charles de Gaulle's France in 1944 is considered a potent element in the nation's self-crafted, triumphant World War Two narrative: the French, conquered by the Germans, valiantly resisted until they rescued themselves and built a new democracy, honoring France's longstanding liberal traditions. Kelly Ricciardi Colvin's Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944-1954 calls that potent element into question. By analyzing a range of sources, including women's magazines, trials, memoirs, and spy novels, this book explores the ways in which culture was used to limit the power of the female vote. It exposes a wide network of constructed behavioral norms that supported a conservative vision of French identity. Taken together, they depicted men as virile Resistors for French democracy and history, and women as solely domestic support. Indeed Colvin shows that women's access to the vote emerged alongside an explosion of cultural messages that encouraged them to retreat into the home, to find mates, to have 'millions of beautiful babies', in the words of de Gaulle, and not to challenge patriarchy in any way. This is a vital study for understanding the nature of postwar France and women's history in 20th-century Europe.