We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Carceral and Intersectional Feminism in Congress.
- Authors
Whittier, Nancy
- Abstract
This paper uses a materialist feminist discourse analysis to examine how women’s movement organizations, liberal Democrats, and conservative Republican legislators shaped the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and the consequences for intersectional and carceral feminism. Drawing on qualitative analysis of Congressional hearings, published feminist and conservative discussion of VAWA, and accounts of feminist mobilization around VAWA, I first show how a multi-issue coalition led by feminists shaped VAWA. Second, I show how discourses of crime intermixed with feminism into a polysemic gendered crime frame that facilitated cross-ideological support. Third, I show how, in contrast, intersectional issues that activists understood as central to violence against women were discursively and structurally separated from gendered crime in Congress. Although a multi-issue movement coalition advocated for expansions in VAWA dealing with immigrants, unmarried partners, same-sex partners, transgender people, and Native Americans, these issues were understood in Congress through more controversial single-issue discourses and often considered in administratively separate Congressional committees. Fourth, I show how VAWA’s outcomes played out in terms of carceral and intersectional feminist goals.
- Subjects
FEMINISM; SOCIAL conditions of women; ETHNICITY in women; VIOLENCE against women; ABUSE of women
- Publication
Gender & Society, 2016, Vol 30, Issue 5, p791
- ISSN
0891-2432
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/0891243216653381