ABSTRACT

Feminist scholars have demonstrated how ‘dominant discourses’ and ‘master narratives’ frequently reflect patriarchal influence, thereby distorting and depoliticizing women’s 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 women’s attempts to counter-story their lives when prevailing discourses are unhelpful or, indeed, harmful. As such, it is an exploration of women’s agency and resistance, which highlights the challenges and complexities of such discursive work.

The chapters explore women’s resistance across a wide range of experiences, including: intimate partner violence, casual sex, depression, premenstrual change, disordered eating, lesbian identity, women’s 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 women’s everyday lives, Women Voicing Resistance will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of psychology, gender studies, women’s studies, sociology, and social work.

chapter 3|15 pages

Beyond ‘Coming Out'

Lesbians' (alternative) stories of sexual identity told in post-apartheid South Africa

chapter 4|20 pages

Bodies Talk

On the challenges of hearing childbirth counter-stories

chapter 5|20 pages

Counter-Storying Rape

Women's efforts toward liberatory meaning making

chapter 6|18 pages

“I Used to Think I Was Going A Little Crazy”

Women's resistance to the pathologization of premenstrual change

chapter 7|19 pages

Talking Against Dominance

South African women resisting dominant discourse in narratives of violence

chapter 8|20 pages

“Oh it Was Good Sex!”

Heterosexual women's (counter)narratives of desire and pleasure in casual sex

chapter 9|18 pages

Depression as Oppression

Disrupting the biomedical discourse in women's stories of sadness

chapter 10|15 pages

‘Girly-Girls', ‘Scantily-Clad Ladies’, and Policewomen

Negotiating and resisting femininities in non-traditional work space

chapter 12|15 pages

Women's Discursive Resistance

Attuning to counter-stories and collectivizing for change