Women Voicing Resistance Discursive and narrative explorations [Paperback]

Feminist scholars have demonstrated how dominant discourses and master narratives frequently reflect patriarchal influence, thereby distorting and depoliticizing womens storying of their own lives. In this groundbreaking volume a number of internationally recognized researchers, working across a range of disciplines, provide a detailed examination of womens attempts to counter-story their lives when prevailing discourses are unhelpful or, indeed, harmful. As such, it is an exploration of womens agency and resistance, which highlights the challenges and complexities of such discursive work.

The chapters explore womens resistance across a wide range of experiences, including: intimate partner violence, casual sex, depression, premenstrual change, disordered eating, lesbian identity, womens work in male-dominated spaces, rape, and child birth. Each chapter combines theoretical analyses with illuminating first-hand accounts, and elaborates practical implications that provide directions for individual and social change.

Providing an incisive and comprehensive exploration of discourse, oppression and resistance, that cuts across domains of womens everyday lives, Women Voicing Resistancewill be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of psychology, gender studies, womens studies, sociology, and social work.

Lafrance and McKenzie-Mohr, Introduction. DeVault, Language for troubles talk. Jane Ussher & Janette Perz, PMS as a process of negotiation: Womens strategies of coping and resistance for premenstrual change and distress. Rickett, Girly-girls, professional women and hard women. Negotiating and resisting hegemonic femininities in non-traditional work space. Boonzaier, Talking against dominance: South African women resisting hegemonic discourse in narratives of violence. Gibson, BeyolӮ