Women as a linguistic footnote Kuhar, Roman; Antić Gaber, Milica
Gender and language,
11/2022, Volume:
16, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The debate on nonsexist or gender-sensitive language in Slovenia has been taking place since the mid-1990s. It intensified again in 2018 when the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, decided to ...use the feminine grammatical gender in its internal regulations as generic and inclusive for all genders. The decision provoked heated public reactions and media reports. Through critical frame analysis of 60 media texts published between May and December 2018, this article identifies four basic frames: the decision as impermissible linguistic engineering, as a sign of excessive political correctness, as a false solution to the actual existence of sexism in language, or finally, as a positive change. Whereas many of the arguments used in the Slovenian debate were found in similar debates elsewhere, a new discursive frame emerged that cannot be placed on the classical dichotomy of feminist and antifeminist, but is instead based on equality fatigue and the understanding that gender equality has allegedly already been achieved.Razprava o neseksisticni oziroma spolno obcutljivi rabi jezika v Sloveniji poteka ze od sredine 90. let prejsnjega stoletja. Ponovno se je okrepila leta 2018, ko je bil na Filozofski fakulteti UL sprejet sklep o genericni rabi zenskega slovnicnega spola kot vkljucujocega za vse spole v internih pravilnikih fakultete. Odlocitev je sprozila burne odzive javnosti in prav taksno porocanje medijev. S kriticno analizo okvirjev smo analizirali 60 medijskih besedil, objavljenih med majem in decembrom 2018, in v njih identificirali stiri osnovne okvire: odlocitev kot nedopusten jezikovni inzeniring, kot znak pretirane politicne korektnosti, kot napacno resitev za preseganje dejanskega obstoja seksizma v jeziku oziroma kot pozitivno spremembo. Medtem ko je mnoge argumente, uporabljene v slovenski razpravi, moc najti v podobnih razpravah drugod, se je v analiziranih medijskih porocilih pojavil tudi nov diskurzivni okvir, ki ga ni mogoce umestiti na klasicni feministicni ali protifeministicni kontinuum, saj temelji na zasicenosti z enakostjo in razumevanjem, da je enakost spolov domnevno ze dosezena.
The aim of the present paper is to map the development of women's and gender studies (WGS) in the academic field in Slovenia. Slovenia is the first of the former Yugoslav state republics in which WGS ...have succeeded in entering the academic field and becoming part of institutionalized university study. In this paper we will ask the following questions: How, when and why did this happen? How was this connected to women's and feminist movements and politics regarding women's issues and demands? What were the obstacles in this process? Who were the agents and what were the factors that supported demands for the incorporation of WGS in academia? How has the field evolved in the last few decades? What were the phases of this development? Which fields were the forerunners, which were the late-comers and which are still left aside? What are the thematic scopes taught in WGS courses? In which degrees are the courses offered and what are their modules? Who teaches them? The mapping in this paper is mainly based on primary sources of university programmes and their curricula at faculties of the University of Ljubljana, as well as on interviews with important agents in the field. (DIPF/Orig.).
This paper provides an analysis of gender equality at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana and examines the main results in the broader context of quality in higher education. The ...Faculty of Arts participated in a project that aimed to develop a gender equality plan for the institution. Data from different aspects of institutional life were collected and analysed to gain a better insight into institutional equality and its relationship with the existing notion of quality in academia, especially through academic career advancement. The study reveals that more women than men tend to remain at the same academic rank for an extended period, particularly at the assistant professor level, and that they meet more objective and subjective obstacles on their academic path. Although there is an increasing awareness of academic policies and practices that foster equality in higher education, there is still a prevalent and strong perception that equality measures compromise academic standards.
After the first multi-party election in the Slovene National Assembly the share of women MPs dropped dramatically (from 24 per cent in 1986 to 17.5 per cent in 1990) and did not substantially change ...during the following two decades. This led to a debate among feminist activists and scholars and left-oriented female politicians regarding the absence of effective measures to improve the situation. The first proposals to introduce gender quotas initially for internal party bodies and later for national elections were put forward by women in the centre and left-wing parties. The voluntary quotas adopted by these parties did not yield visible progress on the presence of women in important political bodies, as these parties' gatekeepers did not fully respect their own rules when composing candidate lists. It was only when legal quotas were introduced that significant changes occurred in the share of women at the highest levels of Slovene politics. In contrast to previous studies on gender quotas in Slovenia, this paper focuses on the importance of the legal and institutional mechanisms in the Slovene context that increased the number of women in politics and examines the political process that paved the way for greater gender equality by using data from elections and putting the data into a broader context. The authors conclude that without gender quotas imposed by legislation the percentage of women in the last parliamentary election in 2014 would not have increased to 37 per cent (the highest among CEE countries) but also identify some limitations to the effectiveness of quota regulations in the Slovene political and institutional context.
The widespread adoption of gender quotas in politics is one of the major contemporary electoral reforms. Our starting point for this special section is the fact that although the study of gender ...quotas is a growing area in politics and gender research, the use of electoral gender quotas in the Central East European region is still understudied. This issue remains despite the fact that most countries in the region have adopted some type of gender quotas, either by law or as party quotas adopted by individual parties.
The paper discusses the issue of feminist knowledge production and reproduction in relation to the subject and her geo-political location. This discussion was prompted by Sofi Oksanen’s letter to ...Melania Trump in 2017. We argue that this letter is subtly based on the power dynamics of the centre, semiperiphery and periphery, and we attempt to make these dynamics visible. Namely, Oksanen addresses M. Trump as the one who made it without the necessary critique of what ‘making-it’ means, while at the same time she positions her as the potential hero that can save ‘us’ all, where ‘us’ refers to the women in the semiperiphery. This heroization of M. Trump presupposes that post-socialist countries face gender (and gendered) issues at the same time as it presupposes that these issues cannot be effectively and successfully addressed by the women in the postsocialist countries themselves. Thus, Oksanen’s heroization is based on a two-fold process of constituting a vulnerable subject stripped of her agency, i.e. the women in post-socialist countries, and an autonomous, agentic subject for whose intervention she calls for, that is, a ‘Western-ized’ subject. Such gestures, which are evident in the letter, are a part of reproducing the geopolitical dynamics between the centre, semiperiphery and periphery, or, more specifically, of constructing the semi-peripheral post-socialist countries, the construct of which neglects the vigour of feminist practices, productions and movements in post-socialist countries.
The present issue of the CEPS Journal is the first edition of a scientific journal completely dedicated to the question of gender and education, and is an important element in the mosaic of ...scientific production on the theme in Central- East Europe. Moreover, this issue brings six articles all dealing with specific gender-related issues in the field of education. (DIPF/Orig.).
Women as a linguistic footnote Kuhar, Roman; Gaber, Milica Antić
Gender and language,
01/2022, Volume:
16, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The debate on nonsexist or gender-sensitive language in Slovenia has been taking place since the mid-1990s. It intensified again in 2018 when the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, decided to ...use the feminine grammatical gender in its internal regulations as generic and inclusive for all genders. The decision provoked heated public reactions and media reports. Through critical frame analysis of 60 media texts published between May and December 2018, this article identifies four basic frames: the decision as impermissible linguistic engineering, as a sign of excessive political correctness, as a false solution to the actual existence of sexism in language, or finally, as a positive change. Whereas many of the arguments used in the Slovenian debate were found in similar debates elsewhere, a new discursive frame emerged that cannot be placed on the classical dichotomy of feminist and antifeminist, but is instead based on equality fatigue and the understanding that gender equality has allegedly already been achieved.
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