Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 award-winning musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was produced during a time of great political and economic uncertainty in New York City. Although not overtly political, the themes of urban crisis and class inequality that birthed the original legend of Sweeney Todd in Industrial Revolution London continued to play a large role within the modern musical, reflecting leftist political concerns at large. The main political argument within the work is the critique of class hierarchies created by capitalism and how the upper classes abuse the lower classes, ie. how Judge Turpin uses his power to abuse Sweeney Todd and the grave consequences of such actions. Less obvious, however, are the importance of gender hierarchy and the objectification of women within this anti-capitalist critique. This paper focuses on the character of Johanna and the three songs sung about her by the three main male leads. These songs provide a case study of how gendered objectification and commodification play a significant role in the overall Marxist critique intrinsic to the musical and the Sweeney Todd legend overall. The work’s rootedness in the anti-capitalist critique of the New Left in the 1970s and the concurrent rise of Marxist and socialist feminism provide clues to understanding the context and meaning behind the violent treatment of women within the musical as an extension of the anti-capitalist critique that is fundamental to the work. / text

The purpose of the study was to analyse and compare the current Swedish socialist government, which have declared themselves as the first feminist government, with the previous non- socialist government. This is to see if, and if so how, the current government’s policies regarding gender differ from the former government’s policies. This paper has analysed both governments using different feminist theoretical approaches to see which of the perspectives characterize the government’s policies regarding gender, and if there has been a shift towards any of the perspectives. The three feminist theoretical perspectives used were liberal feminism, socialist feminism and postmodern feminism. The method used was an idea analysis, and ideal types of the three theoretical feminist perspectives as the analytical instrument. The material contains public texts released by the governments. The result of the study showed that the government’s policies regarding gender are highly similar and that their policies can be related mainly to the liberal- and socialist feminist perspectives. The result also showed that there has not been a shift towards any of the perspectives since the current government was elected, although only the current government could be related, to a small extent, to postmodern feminism.

The South African concept of freedom of testation is one of the most absolute concepts of freedom of testation in westernised legal systems. It is suggested that the South African concept of freedom of testation is a memento of capitalist patriarchy. As the South African legal system practices a nearly absolute concept of freedom of testation, capitalist patriarchy has maintained masculine control of property in South Africa and perpetuated the systems of male dominance prevalent in South Africa. Freedom of testation allows for wealth to pass from one male to another. It also allows entrenched gender roles to continue by excluding women from inheriting. Thus the South African law of testate succession and its central concept of freedom of testation allows for discrimination on the ground of gender. / Jurisprudence / LL.M

The South African concept of freedom of testation is one of the most absolute concepts of freedom of testation in westernised legal systems. It is suggested that the South African concept of freedom of testation is a memento of capitalist patriarchy. As the South African legal system practices a nearly absolute concept of freedom of testation, capitalist patriarchy has maintained masculine control of property in South Africa and perpetuated the systems of male dominance prevalent in South Africa. Freedom of testation allows for wealth to pass from one male to another. It also allows entrenched gender roles to continue by excluding women from inheriting. Thus the South African law of testate succession and its central concept of freedom of testation allows for discrimination on the ground of gender. / Jurisprudence / LL.M

Submitted by Morgana Silva (morgana_linhares@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-07-01T19:15:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 687518 bytes, checksum: fe17b42ceeeffb868899d20d6a62e303 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-01T19:15:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 687518 bytes, checksum: fe17b42ceeeffb868899d20d6a62e303 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-06 / This academic work is a critical review of studies on violence against women undertaken by the american radical feminism and the approaches influenced by this. The research aims to analyze the theoretical framework used on the interpretation about violence in heterosexual relationships, considering the hypothesis that some of its assumptions are wrong. Problem areas found in American traditional theory revolved mainly around three issues. First, its simplistic and reductionist analysis, which summarizes the explanation of violence to gender. Second, its essentialist and deterministic conception of attributes related to men and to their sexuality, which gives them an insurmountable violent nature. Third, the strategy to struggle against violence lately reduced to criminalization and punishment. Such misconceptions reflect their adoption of the old etiological paradigm in criminological considerations made by this current, which has reverberated in different feminist theories and in political activism. In contrast, this work proposes a feminist approach to compose a unit with the critical criminology, that is, to make an interpretation of violence contextualized historically free of essentialism and committed to human emancipation forward to the various mechanisms of oppression. / Este trabalho constitui uma revisão crítica dos estudos sobre a violência contra a mulher empreendidos pelo feminismo radical estadunidense e pelas abordagens por este influenciadas. A pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar a fundamentação teórica implementada nas interpretações sobre a violência nas relações heterossexuais, considerando a hipótese de que alguns de seus pressupostos estejam equivocados. Principalmente três aspectos são problematizados nas interpretações da corrente norte-americana. Primeiro, sua análise simplista e reducionista, que resume a explicação da violência contra a mulher à questão de gênero. Segundo, sua concepção essencialista e determinista dos atributos referentes aos homens e a sua sexualidade, que lhes atribui uma natureza violenta insuperável. Terceiro, a estratégia de combate à violência, ultimamente reduzida à criminalização e à penalização de condutas. Tais perspectivas refletem a adoção do antigo paradigma etiológico nas reflexões criminológicas realizadas por essa corrente, que tem reverberado nas diversas teorias feministas e na militância política. Em contraponto, este trabalho propõe uma abordagem feminista que componha uma unidade com a criminologia crítica, isto é, que faça uma interpretação da violência contextualizada historicamente, livre de essencialismos e comprometida com a emancipação humana frente aos diversos mecanismos de opressão.

This essay shows how Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) functions as a critique of patriarchal society as it depicts a dystopic, dismantled society where women are divided into societal groups on biological grounds. Based on socialist feminist literary theory, an analysis is carried out of two of the female characters, Offred and Serena Joy, who are both oppressed by a patriarchal, totalitarian government; an oppression that is manifested in different ways. Offred is used as a tool to provide children and Serena Joy is confined within the home. The focus of the analysis is on the oppression of these two characters by the patriarchal government through the removal of their rights due to their gender. Red and blue, the two colors used to mark their different societal groups, are analyzed to show how they affect the reader’s perception of these characters and how the novel demonstrates the division of women visually. / Denna uppsats visar hur Margaret Atwoods roman Tjänarinnans berättelse (1985) fungerar som en kritik mot ett patriarkalt samhälle. Denna kritik tar sig uttryck genom en dystopisk skildring av ett samhälle där kvinnor delas in i sociala grupper baserat på deras biologiska förutsättningar. Med utgångspunkt i socialistisk feministisk litteraturteori görs en karaktärsanalys av två av de kvinnliga karaktärerna, Offred och Serena Joy. De är båda förtryckta av det patriarkala, totalitära styret, ett förtryck som tar sig uttryck på olika sätt. Offred används som ett verktyg för att öka barnafödandet och Serena Joy är isolerad i hemmet. Analysen fokuserar på förtryckandet av de två karaktärerna baserat på borttagandet av deras tidigare rättigheter på grund av deras kön. Röd och blå, två färger som används för att markera deras sociala grupp, analyseras för att påvisa hur de påverkar läsarens uppfattning av karaktärerna och hur romanen rent visuellt kategoriserar kvinnor i olika grupper.

This thesis investigates the figure of the cyborg as conceptualised by Donna Haraway in The Cyborg Manifesto (1991). The figure of the cyborg, as a transgressive figure in the late twentieth century within socialist feminist discourse, is problematized with regard to its efficacy as a creature that challenges the constructed nature of gender and contests the boundary between human and machine through its ambiguous nature. Haraway’s notions of the cyborg, which she bases partly on cyborg characters from Science Fiction literature, deny the ocularcentric traditions that have structured gender and the body. Similarly, Haraway does not engage adequately with the figure of the cyborg with regard to situating it historically. This thesis unpacks both the visual and the historical aspects that have structured the cyborg body. By engaging with these concepts, the cyborg emerges as a figure that is identified through visual signifiers of female deviance and pathology. By reading female deviance and pathology on the body of the nineteenth-century hysteric, similarities can be drawn between the hysteric and the cyborg. Through a reading of Alien (1979); Blade Runner (1982); and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) key cyborg texts of the late twentieth century, the figure of the cyborg, and its relation to the deviant pathologised female can be understood when read against the body of the hysteric and how it was visually coded and communicated

Caryl Churchill, the most widely performed female dramatist in contemporary British theatre, is a playwright preoccupied with the dissection of the traditional relations of power. She challenges social and dramatic conventions through her innovative exploration of the male gaze, the objectification of women, the performativity of gender, and women as objects of exchange within a masculine economy. In so doing, Churchill locates her concerns in the area of `materialism and gender'. Churchill explicates a socialist-feminist position by pointing directly at the failure of liberal feminism. The lack of a sense of community among women, highlighted by Churchill's portrayal of women such as Marlene in `Top Girls', forms a critical aspect of Churchill's work. Her drama re-iterates how meaningful change is impossible while women continue to oppress one another, and while economic structures perpetuate patriarchy. Altered consciousness, aligned to socio-political re-structuring, is necessary for both the oppressors and the oppressed, in a society where too much emphasis has been placed on individualism. The outspoken hope for a transgression of the conventional processes of identification and other omnipresent, oppressive socio-political phenomena, is a strong aspect of Churchill's work. Her plays reveal how signs create reality rather than reflect it, and she uses Brechtian-based distancing methods to induce a critical examination of gendered relations. Time-shifting, overlapping dialogue, doubling and cross-casting are used by Churchill to manipulate the sign-systems of the dominant order. Cross-gender casting, Churchill's most widely reviewed dramatic device, is employed to destabilise fixed sexual identities determined by dominant heterosexual ideology. She calls into question the traditional sign `Woman' - which is constructed by and for the male gaze - and addresses the marginality of the female experience in a non-linear framework. Although dealing with serious issues, Churchill's plays are often executed in a style that is at once amusing and thought-provoking to exclude the possibility of didacticism. With her skilful use of language and innovative techniques as her highly effective instruments, Churchill accomplishes her broader purpose with originality. In its originality and complexity, her drama is in itself a `new possibility' for different forms. / English Studies / M. A. (English)

女性與貧窮之間的密切關連幾乎舉世皆然，台灣亦不例外。除了從傳統的貧窮定義來界定女性的貧窮問題，女性其實在個人能力的發展、權利與機會上都較男性少。同時，以家戶所得的計算方式掩蓋了女性的貧窮現象，而父權體制資本主義更刻意貶低了女性的勞動價值。本文先從貧窮的定義開始，探討傳統的貧窮計算未考量到家戶中性別權力的分配，導致許多女性的貧窮問題無法真實呈現，以所得界定貧窮與否，更是忽略了女性在社會上被剝奪的機會與選擇。貧窮女性化的定義至今仍有諸多討論，最為廣泛的角度來看，其指涉貧窮人口中的女性比例逐漸上升的趨勢。從研究看來，台灣的女性貧窮狀況確實有上升的趨勢，女戶長家戶的貧窮率也一直高於男性。本文透過社會主義女性主義的角度，試圖理解女性貧窮的現象與成因，從而聚焦在兩個面向：家務勞動的女性化、勞動市場的性別區隔。事實上市場跟家庭並如資本主義所希冀的可以一分為二，父權式的資本主義思維不只在市場中運作，更滲入家庭生活之中。以愛之名的各種角色（如母親、妻子、媳婦）不僅讓女性的勞動付出得不到經濟上的回報，更將女性的就業與能力限縮在無法與男性匹敵的狀態內。隨著勞動型態不斷地改變，短期聘僱、彈性變換的雇用型態對於女性的經濟穩定增添更多風險。台灣的制度與文化在父權國家的運作機制下，貧窮問題的重要性總是遠遠落後於經濟成長的追求。殘補式的福利措施既無法解決問題，更加深了弱勢者的依賴。唯有改變個人與國家整體的傳統父權思維，才能夠普遍改善女性的處境。

Caryl Churchill, the most widely performed female dramatist in contemporary British theatre, is a playwright preoccupied with the dissection of the traditional relations of power. She challenges social and dramatic conventions through her innovative exploration of the male gaze, the objectification of women, the performativity of gender, and women as objects of exchange within a masculine economy. In so doing, Churchill locates her concerns in the area of `materialism and gender'. Churchill explicates a socialist-feminist position by pointing directly at the failure of liberal feminism. The lack of a sense of community among women, highlighted by Churchill's portrayal of women such as Marlene in `Top Girls', forms a critical aspect of Churchill's work. Her drama re-iterates how meaningful change is impossible while women continue to oppress one another, and while economic structures perpetuate patriarchy. Altered consciousness, aligned to socio-political re-structuring, is necessary for both the oppressors and the oppressed, in a society where too much emphasis has been placed on individualism. The outspoken hope for a transgression of the conventional processes of identification and other omnipresent, oppressive socio-political phenomena, is a strong aspect of Churchill's work. Her plays reveal how signs create reality rather than reflect it, and she uses Brechtian-based distancing methods to induce a critical examination of gendered relations. Time-shifting, overlapping dialogue, doubling and cross-casting are used by Churchill to manipulate the sign-systems of the dominant order. Cross-gender casting, Churchill's most widely reviewed dramatic device, is employed to destabilise fixed sexual identities determined by dominant heterosexual ideology. She calls into question the traditional sign `Woman' - which is constructed by and for the male gaze - and addresses the marginality of the female experience in a non-linear framework. Although dealing with serious issues, Churchill's plays are often executed in a style that is at once amusing and thought-provoking to exclude the possibility of didacticism. With her skilful use of language and innovative techniques as her highly effective instruments, Churchill accomplishes her broader purpose with originality. In its originality and complexity, her drama is in itself a `new possibility' for different forms. / English Studies / M. A. (English)