In our first article of this issue, ‘What’s in a name?’ The discursive construction of gender identity over time’, Sofia Aboim considers how the focus on gender diversity enabled by the development of transgender studies has heightened the possibility of constructing gender identity through verbalization and how, as a consequence, personal narratives have become increasingly important. Drawing on interviews with transgender and gender-nonconforming people in Portugal, Aboim examines the terms used to self-describe over time, and how people appropriate different lexicons at the intersection of multiple categories, challenging one-dimensional understandings of gender identity.
Carla Moleiro, Violeta Alarcão and Lia Raquel Neves discuss their scoping review of research on trans people in Portugal, giving an overview of key issues and frameworks for research and identifying future approaches for studying the diversity of the trans population.
Focusing on trans subjectivities in Iran, Bahar Azadi and Zara Saeidzadeh use the concepts of epistemic misrecognition and subjectivation to investigate how Iranian trans people’s status is misrecognized both inside and outside Iran, through discourses and practices of ‘translessness’ and trans normativity. Both these result in Iranian trans people and their experiences being made invisible in society.
Chaitali Choudhury and Akshaya K. Rath examine how, in the early 20th century, the Indian anti-colonial nationalist, Gandhi, drew on the ideal of a ‘pure’ and ‘asexual’ eunuch through the practice of ‘brahmacharya’- a search for God through celibacy. However, as Choudhury and Rath show, Gandhi’s engagement with forms of sexual and gender identity did not extend to other sexual communities in India.
Ankita Chakrabarti and Bhaswati Das consider recognition and citizenship issues in relation to transgender communities, focusing on India’s 2019 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act. They consider the extent to which this Act grants recognition to transgender people and whether it awards a form of citizenship that guarantees representation and equality. As they conclude, recognition must be about the right to be different but equal.
Rachel R. Steele, Sakina Bengali, Gwynne Richardson, Mackensie Disbennett and Yasmeen Othman examine Muslim women’s experience of Islamophobia in the US, against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s presidency, and in particular, his proposed travel restrictions on people from predominantly Muslim countries. They show that hiding religious identity in public is related to measures of prejudice for women but not for men. Islamophobia is clearly gendered, but, as the authors note, we need a stronger focus on the intersectionality of identity in order to understand the multidimensional nature of gendered Islamophobia.
Mari-Luz Esteban analyzes the characteristics of the Basque Country’s Women’s Houses, which are dedicated to creating spaces, services and support for groups of women. Esteban argues that the Women’s Houses can be seen as laboratories for changing the political subjectivities of the people who participate in them, and that despite – and sometimes because of – tensions between them, the co-existence of different groups of feminist women is made possible there.
Julie King, Nicole Edwards and Hanna Watling investigate the role that female African disability activists and leaders play in addressing the stigma, discrimination and exclusion experienced by people with disabilities. Drawing on interviews with leaders from Tanzania, Ghana, and Kenya and considering leadership influences, styles and priorities, they show how, despite discrimination, these female leaders are able to draw strength from personal – often difficult – experiences, in order to connect with other women with disabilities
Yoana Fernanda Nieto-Valdivieso explores how women survivors of sexual violence and other human rights abuses co-operate with women-led organizations in Colombia to cofacilitate repair and regeneration, making possible positive changes in women’s lives, despite stressful and traumatic experiences and the systemic inequality and oppression they face.
Our final three papers focus on gender and young people. Malainine Ebno considers the representation of women in Mauritanian secondary school English textbooks, asking what these might reveal about the Mauritanian government’s goal of achieving equality. As she shows, the textbooks represent women in traditional and stereotypical ways – women are most frequently represented in domestic activities, all the characters are heterosexual and no nonbinary or genderqueer characters appear at all.
Melissa Joy Wolfe investigates what it feels like to be(come) as a girl student in school and how that might be related to female under-representation in STEM fields. Wolfe considers the material consequences of negative affects felt by girls whilst undergoing school experiences, drawing on her work with students at an Australian selective STEM school. As her discussion shows, pedagogical processes are complicit in making gender as binary and hierarchical.
Suvi Pihkala and Tuija Huuki discuss their school-based creative workshops with 10–12-year-old children in Finland, focusing especially on one event – when they split their participants into two groups and marked a room with a duct-taped X to ensure that the group of girls could work together. Using this as an example, they consider how educational and research interventions on gender must be based on a clear understanding of how gender matters for young people and on a commitment to ethical, inclusive, non-normative and transformative approaches.