Women's Human Rights

A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice

Edited by Shelly Grabe

Uses social psychological theory to discuss the mechanisms by which violation against women occur
Draws on perspectives informed by feminist liberation psychology, women of color, and third world feminisms to lend a more informed visibility to women's human rights
Offers a unique synthesis of cutting edge scholarship demonstrating multiple cultural differences among women exist, and that rights violations reflect a systematic pattern going beyond national, economic, and social boundaries

Women's Human Rights

A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice

Edited by Shelly Grabe

Description

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

Edited by Shelly Grabe

Preface
Shelly Grabe

Introduction: The Potential for a Feminist Liberation Psychology in the Advancement of Women's Human Rights
Shelly Grabe

SECTION ONE - RESISTANCE: Understanding Change When Knowledge is Constructed from 'Below'
Shelly Grabe

Chapter 1: "I survived the war, but how can I survive peace" Feminist-based Research on War Rape and Liberation Psychology
Simone Lindorfer and Kirsten Wienberg

Chapter 2: How/Can Psychology Support Low Income LGBTGNC Liberation
Michelle Billies

CRITICAL REFLECTION OF SECTION ONE - Silence Kills in "Revolting" Times: Braiding Feminist Activist Scholarship with the Threads of Resistance, Human Rights and Social Justice
Michelle Fine

SECTION TWO - LIBERATION: The Transformation of Social Structures
Shelly Grabe

Chapter 3: From "Welfare MothersQueens" to "Welfare Warriors": Economic Justice as a Human Right
Heather E. Bullock

Chapter 4: Integrating Grassroots Perspectives and Women's Human Rights: Feminist Liberation Psychology in Action
Geraldine Moane

CRITICAL REFLECTION OF SECTION TWO - What is Psychology's Role in the Project of Liberation and Structural Change?
Abigail J. Stewart

SECTION THREE - JUSTICE: Praxis Whereby Researchers Work Alongside the Dominated and Oppressed Rather than Alongside the Dominator or Oppressor
Shelly Grabe

Chapter 5: Civic Participation, Prefigurative Politics, and Feminist Organizing in Rural Nicaragua
Anjali Dutt

Chapter 6: The Everyday and the Exceptional: Rethinking Gendered Violence and Human Rights in Garo Hills, India
Urmitapa Dutta

CRITICAL REFLECTION OF SECTION THREE - Feminist Intersectional Human Rights: Embodying Justice in and through Transnational Activist Scholarship
M. Brinton Lykes

Conclusion: Being Bold: Building a Justice-oriented Psychology of Women's Human Rights
Anjali Dutt

Women's Human Rights

A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice

Edited by Shelly Grabe

Author Information

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).

Contributors:

Michelle Billies
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Human Services
Kingsborough Community College
Brooklyn, NY, USA

Heather E. Bullock
Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Anjali Dutt
Department of Psychology
Macalester College
Saint Paul, MN, USA

Urmitapa Dutta
Department of Psychology
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Lowell, MA, USA

Michelle Fine
Department of Urban Education
The Graduate Center, CUNY
New York, NY, USA

Shelly Grabe
Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Simone Lindorfer
Liberation Psychology
Salzburg, Austria

M. Brinton Lykes
Lynch School of Education
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA

Geraldine Moane
School of Psychology
University College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

Abigail J. Stewart
Departments of Psychology and Women's Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Kirsten Wienberg
Medica Mondiale
Köln, Germany

Women's Human Rights

A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice

Edited by Shelly Grabe

Reviews and Awards

"Women's Human Rights: A Social Psychological Perspective on Resistance, Liberation, and Justice is a valuable resource for social work practitioners nterested in liberation psychology. Feminist researchers can appreciate the various methodological approaches that are discussed in the discipline of social work and develop new foci on women, empowerment, and human rights in sociology." -- Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work