Why Aren’t More Women’s Texts Translated into English?

A lack of attention from male translators, publishers and critics keeps literary fiction by women barely visible in English.

In a U.S. market where over 70% of all books published in translation are by men, our compromise seemed necessary. It also felt a bit dirty. For women writers and their translators, our individual experiences of bias are supported by statistics. According to the 2017 VIDA Count, our texts compete in a ...
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Policing the Womb 2.0

Why Hungary and Poland’s pro-natalist policies won’t work

Fifty years ago, neo-Malthusian demographers and politicians warned that overpopulation would wipe out all efforts to modernize the world, especially the postcolonial Global South. Rapid population growth in India, Nigeria, Brazil, and Iran were depicted as impediments to development. Republicans (Richard Nixon) and Democrats (Lyndon B. Johnson) worked with Planned ...
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Policing the Womb 2.0

Why Does Patriarchy Persist?

A review of Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider’s book on the price of patriarchy

There are books that do what they set out to do: they make their points clearly, they argue something new, they uncover something for us. Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider’s new book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist?,  does more than that. It is a spark. It is something like a book-length speech ...
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Why Does Patriarchy Persist?

What to Expect When You Are Expecting Exploitation

An excerpt from ‘Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism’

In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous -- clearly, she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us. Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and ...
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What to Expect When You Are Expecting Exploitation

Socialism and the Future of Gender Justice: Part 2

A Dialogue about Feminism in the Marketplace of Ideas

On August 12, 2017, Kristen Ghodsee published an op-ed in the New York Times, titled “Why Women Had Better Sex under Socialism.” The piece was due to appear in print a few days later, but the editors published the online version on that date. Coincidentally, the late night of August 11th and the morning of August ...
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Socialism and the Future of Gender Justice: Part 2

Socialism and the Future of Gender Justice

A Dialogue about Feminism in the Marketplace of Ideas

On August 12, 2017, Kristen Ghodsee published an op-ed in the New York Times, titled “Why Women Had Better Sex under Socialism.” The piece was due to appear in print a few days later, but the editors published the online version on that date. Coincidentally, the late night of August 11th and the morning ...
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Socialism and the Future of Gender Justice

The Politics of Female Sexuality in ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’

What a recent Bollywood film can tell us about risk, pleasure, desire and feminism.

In an advisory issued by the Information and Broadcasting ministry in December 2017, the Indian government banned the telecast of condom advertisements across all television channels until 10 pm on the contention that some of them were “indecent and can impact children.” The implicit idea behind the advisory is that anything involving ...
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The Politics of Female Sexuality in ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’

From Tax Laws to Military Benefits

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Early Battles Against Sex Discrimination

In late December, Focus Features released On the Basis of Sex, a biopic about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Starring Felicity Jones, On the Basis of Sex highlights Ginsburg’s journey through law school, her teaching career, and her family relationships, particularly with her husband, Martin, and her daughter, Jane. The film shows ...
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From Tax Laws to Military Benefits

“Well Known as Miss Betty Cooper”

Gender Expression in 18th-Century Boston

In the years before the American Revolution, Boston newspapers routinely advertised the sale and recapture of enslaved people alongside news of Massachusetts’ resistance to British rule. In these ads, enslavers provided descriptions of fugitives in order to assist slave catchers in returning them to bondage. One 1771 advertisement sought the recapture ...
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“Well Known as Miss Betty Cooper”

What Shakespeare Can Tell Us About School Shootings

In the film O, a 1999 adaptation of Othello, toxic masculinity is at the root of violence

In 1998, five shootings took place on school campuses in the United States. So far in 2018, there have been more than sixty-five. Over the last few decades, the frequency of violence in schools has increased exponentially. As a society, we have struggled to understand the nature of such violence and ...
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What Shakespeare Can Tell Us About School Shootings

The Feminine Revolution of Electronic Music

After years of male domination and overt sexism, DJs and producers grow in number and international impact

In 2015, the German artist Tujamo released the song Booty Bounce , which became one of the hits of the summer. The only sentence of the theme is Let me see that booty bounce (Let me see how that ass moves). The video clip, which is on its way to 18 million views, is three minutes of girls ...
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The Feminine Revolution of Electronic Music

The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory

Reflections on Imagination and Forgetting

“We should remember with caution, even as we must proceed boldly.” This is the way I have already tried to succinctly summarize my approach to “gray memory” earlier this year. I know that memory holds great promise, as Milan Kundera once put it: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of ...
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The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory