Women's Human Rights : A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice

At a United Nations conference in 1995, 189 governments adopted the Beijing Platform for Action, an international agenda for women's equality and a statement of women's rights as human rights. Since that time, violations of women's human rights have become a widely-documented problem across many academic disciplines, international organizations, and activist social movements. Nevertheless, violations against women occur unabated despite widespread commitments internationally to draw increased attention to women's experiences. Given that a focus on women's rights was first put forth two decades ago, the question remains: why do egregious violations of women's rights continue? Edited by Shelly Grabe, Women's Human Rights: A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice contributes to the discussion of why women's human rights warrants increased focus in the context of globalization and how psychology can provide the currently missing, but necessary, links between transnational feminism and the discourse on women's human rights and neoliberalism. This volume takes a radically different approach to women's human rights by turning its attention to a variety of disciplines and, as a result, develops new ideas regarding how psychology can be relevant in the study or actualization of women's human rights. By doing so, it makes it very clear for readers as to how activist scholarship can make a unique contribution to the defense of women's rights. Rather than using examples that have been sensationalized throughout academia and advocacy (i.e. genital mutilation), each of this book's contributing authors has used examples (rape, sexual orientation, homelessness, civic participation, violence) of specific human rights violations that occur the world over in their attempt to make the relevance of psychology to this topic more visible to the reader. Shelly Grabe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She works in partnership with grassroots women's organizations in Nicaragua and Tanzania to privilege the activism and voices of marginalized women in the pursuit of women's human rights. She uses a multi-method approach from within psychology to provide the currently missing, but necessary links between transnational feminism, the discourse on women's human rights and globalization, and the international attention given to women's "empowerment" to help support strategies and interventions aimed at social change by local women. In her academic work, Shelly employs frameworks informed by feminist liberation psychology, human rights discourse, decolonial feminism, and social justice to organize her research, teaching, and outreach. She is the author of Narrating a Psychology of Resistance: Voices of the Compañeras in Nicaragua (Oxford University Press, 2016). Cover......Page 1 Women’s Human Rights A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 8 About the Artist......Page 6 Preface......Page 10 Contributors......Page 14 Introduction: The Potential for a Feminist Liberation Psychology in the Advancement of Women’s Human Rights......Page 16 SECTION ONE | Resistance: Understanding Change When Knowledge Is Constructed from “Below”......Page 38 chapter 1 “I survived the war, but how can I survive peace?”: Feminist-​Based Research on War Rape and Liberation Psychology......Page 42 Chapter 2 How/​Can Psychology Support Low-​Income LGBTGNC Liberation?......Page 76 CRITICAL REFLECTION OF SECTION ONE—​Silence Kills in “Revolting” Times: Braiding Feminist Activist Scholarship with the Threads of Resistance, Human Rights, and Social Justice......Page 108 SECTION THREE | ​JUSTICE: Praxis Whereby Researchers Work Alongside the Dominated and Oppressed Rather Than Alongside the Dominator or Oppressor......Page 116 Chapter 3 From “Welfare Queens” to “Welfare Warriors”: Economic Justice as a Human Right......Page 120 Chapter 4 Integrating Grassroots Perspectives and Women’s Human Rights: Feminist Liberation Psychology in Action......Page 150 CRITICAL REFLECTION OF SECTION TWO—​What Is Psychology’s Role in the Project of Liberation and Structural Change?......Page 176 Chapter 5 Civic Participation, Prefigurative Politics, and Feminist Organizing in Rural Nicaragua......Page 188 Chapter 6 The Everyday and the Exceptional: Rethinking Gendered Violence and Human Rights in Garo Hills, India......Page 216 CRITICAL REFLECTION OF SECTION THREE—​Feminist Intersectional Human Rights: Embodying Justice in and Through Transnational Activist Scholarship......Page 242 Conclusion: Being Bold: Building a Justice-​Oriented Psychology of Women’s Human Rights......Page 252 Index......Page 258 At a United Nations conference in 1995, 189 governments adopted the Beijing Platform for Action, an international agenda for women's equality and a statement of women's rights as human rights. Since that time, violations of women's human rights have become a widely-documented problem across many academic disciplines, international organizations, and activist social movements. Nevertheless, violations against women occur unabated despite widespread commitments internationally to draw increased attention to women's experiences. Given that a focus on women's rights was first put forth two decades ago, the question remains: why do egregious violations of women's rights continue? Edited by Shelly Grabe, Women's Human Rights: A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice contributes to the discussion of why women's human rights warrants increased focus in the context of globalization and how psychology can provide the currently missing, but necessary, links between transnational feminism and the discourse on women's human rights and neoliberalism. This volume takes a radically different approach to women's human rights by turning its attention to a variety of disciplines and, as a result, develops new ideas regarding how psychology can be relevant in the study or actualization of women's human rights. By doing so, it makes it very clear for readers as to how activist scholarship can make a unique contribution to the defense of women's rights. Rather than using examples that have been sensationalized throughout academia and advocacy (i.e. genital mutilation), each of this book's contributing authors has used examples (rape, sexual orientation, homelessness, civic participation, violence) of specific human rights violations that occur the world over in their attempt to make the relevance of psychology to this topic more visible to the reader. __Women’s Human Rights: A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice__ contributes to the discussion of why women’s human rights warrant increased focus in the context of globalization. It considers how psychology can provide the links between transnational feminism and the discourse on women’s human rights and neoliberalism by using activist scholarship and empirical findings based on women’s grassroots resistance. The book takes a radically different approach to women’s human rights than disciplines such as law, for example, by developing new ideas regarding how psychology can be relevant in the study or actualization of women’s human rights and by making clear how activist-scholarship can make a unique contribution to the defense of women’s rights. This radical departure from using a legal framework, or examples that have been sensationalized throughout academia and advocacy (e.g., genital cutting), provides a route for better understanding how the mechanisms of violation operate. Thus, it has the potential to offer alternatives for intervention that extend beyond changing laws or monitoring international human rights treaties. The perspectives offered by the authors are largely informed by feminist liberation psychology, women of color, and critical race and queer theories in an attempt to demonstrate how research in psychology can shed light on the diverse experiences of women resisting human rights violations and to suggest means by which psychological processes can effectively challenge the broader structures of power that exacerbate the violation of women’s rights. "[This book] contributes to the discussion of why women's human rights warrants increased focus in the context of globalization and how psychology can provide the currently missing, but necessary, links between transnational feminism and the discourse on women's human rights and neoliberalism. This volume takes a radically different approach to women's human rights by turning its attention to a variety of disciplines and, as a result, develops new ideas regarding how psychology can be relevant in the study or actualization of women's human rights. By doing so, it makes it very clear for readers as to how activist scholarship can make a unique contribution to the defense of women's rights. Rather than using examples that have been sensationalized throughout academia and advocacy (i.e. genital mutilation), each of this book's contributing authors has used examples (rape, sexual orientation, homelessness, civic participation, violence) of specific human rights violations that occur the world over in their attempt to make the relevance of psychology to this topic more visible to the reader."--Publisher's website This book contributes to the discussion of why women's human rights warrants increased focus in the context of globalization. Further, it also illustrates how psychology can provide the links between transnational feminism and the discourse on women's human rights by drawing on activist scholarship and empirical findings based on grassroots resistance.