Gender and Sexuality

This book discusses the case of Dadaji Bhikaji against Rukhmabai, his twenty-two year old wife. Dadaji filed the suit against his spouse when, after eleven years, she refused to live with him as per the Hindu marriage law. The book looks at all aspects of the lawsuit, including the reactions of the people towards the argument of Pinhey and Rukhmabai’s defiance in consenting to live with her husband. It looks at the role of the British during the court proceedings and highlights some details of Rukhmabai’s life that could reveal some psycho-social factors that gave her the strength to rebel. It is important to note that this book is written using a radical-feminist stance.

Universities are unlikely venues for grading, branding, and marketing gendered beauty, bodies, poise, and style. Nonetheless, thousands of college women have sought not only college diplomas but campus beauty titles and tiaras throughout the twentieth century. The cultural power of beauty pageants continues into the 21st century as campus beauty pageants, especially racial/ethnic pageants and pageants for men, have soared in popularity. Tice asks how, and why, does higher education remain in the beauty and body business and with what effects on student bodies and identities. She explores why students compete in and attend pageants as well as why campus-based etiquette and charm schools are flourishing. Based on archival research and interviews with contemporary campus queens and university sponsors as well as hundreds of hours observing college pageants on predominantly black and white campuses, Tice examines how campus pageant contestants express personal ambitions, desires, and, sometimes, racial/political agendas to resolve the incongruities of performing in evening gowns and bathing suits on stage while seeking their degrees. Tice argues the pageants help to illuminate the shifting iterations of class, race, religion, region, culture, sexuality, and gender braided in campus rituals and student life. Moving beyond a binary of objectification versus empowerment, Tice offers a nuanced analysis of the contradictory politics of higher education, feminism and post-feminism, empowerment, consumerism, race and ethnicity, class mobility, and popular culture on student bodies and cultures, the making of idealized collegiate masculinities and femininities, and the stylization of higher education itself.

Women now receive more college degrees than men, and enter the workforce with better job opportunities than ever before. Indeed, the wage gap between men and women has never been smaller. So why does the typical woman have only 36 cents for every dollar of wealth owned by the typical man? How is it that never-married women working full-time have only 16% as much wealth as similarly situated men? And why do single mothers have only 8% of the wealth of single fathers? The first book to focus on the differences in wealth between women and men, this is an accessible examination of why women struggle to accumulate assets, who has what, and why it matters. The book draws on the most comprehensive national data on wealth and on in-depth interviews to show how differences in earnings, in saving and investing, and, most important, the demands of care-giving all contribute to the gender-wealth gap. It argues that the current focus on equal pay and family-friendly workplace policies, although important, will not ultimately change or eliminate wealth inequalities. What the book calls the “wealth escalator”—comprised of fringe benefits, the tax code, and government benefits—and the “debt anchor” must be the targets of policies aimed at strengthening women's financial resources. The book proposes a number of practical suggestions to address the unequal burdens and consequences of care-giving, so that women who work just as hard as men will not be left standing in financial quicksand.

This book presents the oral testimony of Subhashini (1914–2003), the woman head of a well-known Arya Samaj institution devoted to women's education in rural north India. Subhashini's narrative unfolds a story, within a sea of stories, which has remained silent in the dominant historical discourse. Her memory evokes contrasting images of violence, martyrdom, and Partition. Not 1947 but 1942 — the year of her father's ‘martyrdom’ — is recalled as a violent rupture in her memory. Partition is a moment of celebration, revenge, divine retribution, empathy, remorse, tragedy, and fear. Translating Subhashini's oral testimony, the author recreates the memory of a colonial subject, living in postcolonial times, as a historical narrative. Moving beyond a historical event and well-established historical facts, Violence, Martyrdom and Partition is a parallel history of events and non-events, memory and history, testimony and experience. The book also includes photographs of Subhashini and a map of the Rohtak District and Dujana State.