Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies - Volume 25, Issue 3, 2022

This article discusses the history of FORT (Feministische Oefengroepen Radicale Therapie), a Dutch ‘consciousness-raising’ movement during the era of second-wave feminism. In comparison to other consciousness-raising groups, FORT groups focused even more on exploring the personal in a political context. Still, contemporary feminists as well as historiographers have argued that the FORT groups were mostly spiritual rather than political. Based on oral history interviews with former FORT women, an analysis of written primary sources, and literature study, this article further explores this paradox. It is argued that, for the women involved, the ‘internal’ spiritual path of action and the ‘external’ activist path of action were very much intertwined, and both paths were political. This interpretation challenges the dichotomy of spiritual versus political, and once again confirms that the personal is, in fact, political.

Despite much progress over the past decades, large gender inequalities persist. In this article, I argue that we need a better understanding of social norms to understand persisting gender inequalities and to achieve further gender equality. Many social norms are gender norms: informal rules that specify what is acceptable and what is not in a group basedupongendered distinctions (e.g. female vs male). I discuss different mechanisms through which existing norms can change: the provision of information to correct misperceptions, legal reforms and policy changes, and norm transgression. I illustrate how changing norms could increase gender equality by discussing examples related to important gender norms around paid labour, caregiving, and parenthood.

Violence against women in politics (VAWIP) is a significant problem. Worldwide, female politicians face violence targeted specifically at them because they are women engaging in politics. The impact of VAWIP has mainly received attention in conflict settings and in countries where women are traditionally largely underrepresented in politics. Based on a case study in Belgium, this article looks into how VAWIP affects female politicians in a country with a high presence of women in politics. To do so, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven female politicians sitting in different Belgian parliaments and municipal councils. Based on a thematic analysis applied to the data, three mechanisms were identified through which VAWIP affects female politicians: it creates a hostile work environment for women, it silences women as political actors, and it hinders women in carrying out their actual work. The results show that all these difficulties added up can lead female politicians to consider leaving or actually leave politics. The article therefore concludes that the impact of VAWIP is twofold: it drives women out of politics but also significantly reduces their input while they are active in politics.

This article is a slightly revised version of the author’s inaugural lecture, held on 12 November 2021 at Radboud University in Nijmegen, upon accepting the chair of Feminism and Christianity (Catharina Halkes Chair). It uses the shelter as a metaphor to think about the position of gendered, sexual, and racial minorities within Christian traditions. The argument departs from a seemingly off-hand remark in a church report on the position of LGBTIQ+ believers in a small Protestant denomination in the Netherlands. Here, it is stated that, while heterosexual marriage is ‘at home in God’s creation’, same-sex relationships are ‘a shelter in a broken life’. The author argues for a queer approach where the transient, ramshackle construction of the shelter is reclaimed as a theological space and positionality. Generations of cabin dwellers in past and present times have taught us to nurse a certain amount of healthy house skepticism, which in this article is applied to the solid ‘house’ of Christian traditions. Building on insights from feminist and queer architecture, it is argued that shelters (or cabins, or huts) allow us to think in terms of ‘scrap theology’. This is a theology that provides shelter by using the leftovers from tradition to build new, original, and playful dwellings that are positioned on the uncomfortable border between ‘in’ and ‘out’, thus confronting the Christian tradition with what it has deemed its expendable ‘surplus’.