Modern Women Modernizing Men

Using the experiences of three women in colonial India, Korea and sub-Saharan Africa as case studies, this book explores how professionalism, religion and feminism came together to enable missionary women to become the colleagues and mentors of Western and non-Western men.

In the decade following World War I, nineteenth-century womanhood came under attack not only from feminists but also from innumerable "ordinary" young women determined to create "modern" lives for themselves. These young women cut their hair, wore short skirts, worked for wages, sought entertainment outside the home, and developed new attitudes toward domesticity, sexuality, and their bodies. Historians have generally located the origins of this shift in women's lives in the upheavals of World War I. Birgitte Søland's exquisite social and cultural history suggests, however, that they are to be found not in the war itself, but in much broader social and economic changes. Søland's engrossing chronicle draws on a rich variety of sources--including popular media and medical works as well as archival records and oral histories--to examine how notions of femininity and womanhood were reshaped in Denmark, a small, largely agrarian country that remained neutral during the war. It explores changes in the female body and personality, the forays of young women into the public sphere, the redefinition of female respectability, and new understandings of married life as evidenced in both cultural discourses and social practices. Though specific in its focus, the book raises broad comparative questions as it challenges common assumptions about the social and sexual upheavals that characterized the Western world in the postwar decade. In a remarkably engaging fashion, it shows why the end of World War I did not lead to the return of "normal" life in the 1920s.

No detailed description available for "The Modernization of North African Families in the Paris Area".

Scientific Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Sociology - Gender Studies, , language: English, abstract: The contemporary world has experienced a focus on development as a core influence on social, economic, and political spheres. Equating the preoccupation with development to a discourse, Escobar (86-91) notes the interpretation of societal development as a technical problem requiring rational decisionmaking and management entrusted to a group of people. How such people conceptualize development has an impact on various groups in society. In this case, a male-dominated outlook on development poses various effects on women, explorable through exploring the various theoretical foundations on development (Lindio- MacGovern and Isidor 35). Several important theories conceptualized over the past half a century form the main ideas surrounding development, one of which is the modernization theory. Through taking the perspective of gendered development in which development affects men and women differently, the present study analyzes impacts of development based on the modernization theory and global capitalism on women. The study relies on scholarly works covering development, gendered development, modernization theory, and global capitalism. The approach to the discussion entails an overview of development and modernization theory with a focus on the first world-third world divide. This discussion of development frameworks then ushers in an analysis of how such development impacts women. The main theme under investigation is gendered development dwelling on the fate of women, with the central argument being that development and paradigmatic development theories create opportunities and hindrances for the development of women. [...]

Extrait de la préface : "The subject of this study is social change in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan ; its impact on women's legal status and social positions ; and women's varied responses to, and involvment in, change processes. It also deals with constructions of gender during periods of social and political change. Social change is usually described in terms of modernization, revolution, cultural challenges, and social movements. Much of the standard literature on these topics does not examine women or gender, and thus [the author] hopes this study will contribute to an appreciation of the significance of gender in the midst of change. Neither are there many sociological studies on MENA and Afghansitan or studies on women in MENA and Afghanistan from a sociological perspective. Myths and stereotypes abund regarding women, Islam, and the region, and the sevents of September 11 and since have only compounded them. This book is intended in part to "normalize" the Middle East by underscoring the salience of structural determinants other than religion. It focuses on the major social-change processes in the region to show how women's lives are shaped not only by "Islam" and "culture", but also by economic development, the state, class location, and the world system. Why the focus on women? It is [the autor's] contention that middle-class women are consciously and unconsciously major agents of social change in the region, at the vanguard of movements for modernity, democratization and citizenship."

Morocco is hailed by academics, international NGO workers, and the media as a trailblazer in women’s rights and legal reforms. The country is considered a model for other countries in the Middle East and North African region, but has Morocco made as much progress as experts and government officials claim? In Modernizing Patriarchy, Katja Žvan Elliott examines why women’s rights advances are lauded in Morocco in theory but are often not recognized in reality, despite the efforts of both Islamist and secular feminists. In Morocco, female literacy rates remain among the lowest in the region; many women are victims of gender-based violence despite legal reforms; and girls as young as twelve are still engaged to adult men, despite numerous reforms. Based on extensive ethnographic research and fieldwork in Oued al-Ouliya, Modernizing Patriarchy offers a window into the life of Moroccan Muslim women who, though often young and educated, find it difficult to lead a dignified life in a country where they are expected to have only one destiny: that of wife and mother. Žvan Elliott exposes their struggles with modernity and the legal reforms that are supposedly ameliorating their lives. In a balanced approach, she also presents male voices and their reasons for criticizing the prevailing women’s rights discourse. Compelling and insightful, Modernizing Patriarchy exposes the rarely talked about reality of Morocco’s approach toward reform.

A razor-sharp guide from the authors of The Modern Man's Guide to Life. This enlightened book contains the sort of true-life wisdom that once came from fathers, uncles, and grandfathers. The authors never shrink from detailing how the way some men act is sometimes distinctly unmanly. Excerpted in Playboy magazine.

This book analyzes the nation building process in Turkey from a socio-historical perspective. Authors compare the nation-building process in the Republic period with the pro-Islamists of the JDP period.