Labor and the shadows of gender-based violence in contemporary capitalism: an intersectional feminist perspective

From “Woman in Chains” to Heroine: Feminism, Womanism, and Female Empowerment in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross

This paper examines the representation of female assertiveness, feminism, and womanism in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross. It focuses particularly on the protagonist, Jacinta Wariinga, whose experiences of sexual exploitation, economic marginalisation, patriarchal oppression, and social discrimination reflect the broader challenges confronting African women in a postcolonial society. Drawing on feminist and womanist theoretical perspectives, the study explores how Wariinga progresses from a vulnerable and oppressed woman to an assertive, economically independent, and self-conscious subject who challenges the structures that have historically subordinated women. The paper argues that Ngũgĩ presents Wariinga’s transformation as both a personal and political process, linking female emancipation to the larger struggle against capitalism, neo-colonialism, and patriarchy. Her reclamation of her body, labour, sexuality, and personal identity demonstrates the possibility of resistance and self-empowerment within an oppressive social order. The study further argues that the novel departs from conventional representations of African women as passive victims or symbols of tradition by positioning Wariinga as an active agent in the struggle for social transformation and national liberation. Ultimately, Devil on the Cross presents women’s emancipation as integral to the achievement of genuine Uhuru, suggesting that national liberation remains incomplete without the liberation and empowerment of African women.

Dwelling in conflict: Redesigning the home to rethink family and society

This article critically re-examines the domestic space through the lens of feminist, decolonial, and affect theory, centering on Cini Boeri’s Domestic Project as a case study for rethinking architectural, relational, and political dimensions of the home. Far from being a neutral or private refuge, the home is presented as a deeply ideological and contested site where gendered norms, labour relations, and social reproduction converge. Drawing from Italian feminist activism—particularly the movement for wages for housework—the analysis underscores the role of domestic architecture in naturalising women’s labour while systematically excluding them from spatial decision-making. Through engagements with theorists such as Silvia Federici, bell hooks, Lauren Berlant, and Leslie Kern, the text explores how care, intimacy, and subjectivity are produced and governed within domestic infrastructures. The essay argues for a radical reconfiguration of domestic space as a political act, capable of disrupting heteronormative, capitalist, and patriarchal systems. It highlights the importance of feminist design practices in imagining homes that foster autonomy, relational plurality, and collective care. Ultimately, the home emerges not only as a site of structural domination but as a space of potential transformation—where new modes of living, relating, and resisting can be cultivated

A Reexamination of the Specialized Path Theory of Women's Liberation—A Review and Reconstruction Based on Historical Materialism

Contemporary feminist theory takes patriarchy as its core concept, constructing gender as an axis of oppression independent of class, from which it derives the political strategy of a cross-class feminist alliance. Based on historical materialism, this paper traces the evolution of the concept of patriarchy from Engels to contemporary feminism, and points out that the specialization of women's liberation from the overall process of social liberation is a fundamental theoretical error, which violates historical materialism and dialectics, and confuses the principal contradiction with the secondary contradictions. The root cause of women's oppression lies in private ownership and class division, and the concept of private ownership, as a remnant of private ownership, persists in the form of bourgeois rights under socialist conditions. The correct path to eliminate the remnants of gender oppression is not an anti-patriarchy movement independent of the whole of social liberation, but to integrate it into the overall practice of restricting bourgeois rights and preventing the restoration of capitalism. Taking the historical experience of China's socialist revolution as a case, this paper demonstrates the decisive role of the simultaneous advancement of ownership revolution and ideological revolution in disintegrating patriarchy, and thus responds to the challenges of feminist theory to Marxism. Therefore, this paper proposes that to resolve the dilemma of contemporary gender politics, it is necessary to take historical materialism as the methodological cornerstone, and critically absorb the micro-insights of feminism into gender experience on the premise of adhering to class analysis. The essence of women's liberation is an organic part of social liberation. Only by embedding the demand for gender equality into the revolutionary practice of abolishing private ownership and reconstructing social relations of production can we transcend the myth of identity politics and achieve the all-round liberation of human beings in the deepening development of socialism.

Decentring Gender-Based Violence: Central and Eastern European Perspectives in International Relations

This introductory article advances a feminist rethinking of gender-based violence (GBV) from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Refusing to treat the region as a site of delayed development or exceptional violence, we position CEE as a source of theoretical insights for International Relations and feminist scholarship. Drawing on debates on the continuum of violence, intersectionality, feminist political economy, and the politics of knowledge production, we conceptualise GBV as a constitutive feature of contemporary political orders. We argue that violence operates across interconnected legal, institutional, economic, discursive, and military domains and must be understood in relation to broader processes of war, democratic backsliding, geopolitical contestation, and the global polycrisis. The article further reflects on the ethical and political challenges of feminist knowledge production in times of ongoing conflict and proposes solidarity, care, and pluriversality as key analytical and political horizons for future research on gendered violence.

Weaving strength and care: Situated reflections on women's work and the epistemology of care in biological anthropology

This essay examines how gendered expectations, structural precarity, and institutional hierarchies shape research practices, knowledge production, and career trajectories in biological anthropology. Taking the figure of the “strong woman” as an entry point, it questions celebratory narratives of resilience that frame endurance as an individual virtue while obscuring the structural conditions that make such endurance necessary. Drawing on my situated experience working across South America, Central America, and Europe, and engaging with Latin American feminist scholarship, this essay argues that women's scientific work is sustained through forms of care that are central to, yet rarely recognized within, disciplinary definitions of rigor, authority, and scientific recognition. Care is approached not as a personal disposition, but as a form of labor embedded in fieldwork, laboratory practices, the stewardship of collections and data, and the maintenance of collaborative infrastructures over time. By foregrounding this often‐invisible work, the essay shows that women's contributions to biological anthropology cannot be understood apart from the material, ethical, and institutional arrangements through which knowledge is produced and maintained. In doing so, it reframes care as an epistemological practice that is fundamental to scientific accountability, disciplinary sustainability, and more equitable futures for biological anthropology.

Toward a Theory of Feminist Hospitality Toward a Theory of Feminist Hospitality