Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, I examine the experience of trying to insert feminist methods into a qualitative methods course as well as attempting to make that same qualitative methods course a requirement for all Social Science students at the University of Hawai`i, West O`ahu. Faculty attitudes and student resistance are also discussed.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Many women endorse feminist beliefs without taking on the feminist label. Qualitative methods were used to assess the perceptions of feminists and non-labelers about feminism and the ongoing need for the women’s movement. While most of their ideas were similar, non-labelers believed that feminism implied more activism than did feminists.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper addresses Priti Ramamurthy’s suggestion that feminist theory should “engage with feminist development studies more centrally and accountably in the current age of globalization” (2000:240). I argue that prior to such engagement it is important to examine the problematic baggage attached to feminist development studies through its historical dependency upon and support of the development paradigm. By revisiting Mohanty’s critique of Western development discourse I begin unpacking the historical baggage and identify some important questions that must be asked before such an engagement proceeds. Most significantly, I suggest that the history of feminist development studies demonstrates a tendency to subsume any real critique of global inequalities in the name of “helping women” and that the general approach to women in development supports rather than significantly challenges development policy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Our understanding of feminist analyses of world politics at this time, and in any time, relates in part to locating ourselves as theorists and activists in relation to existing global power structures. One area of feminist world politics encompasses the activism of organized movements that seek to challenge the existing hegemonic social and political order. While the idea of 'a feminist internationality' has long been problematized in feminist circles, there remains persistent discussion of feminist movements or women's movements as one of several key potentially transnational social movements best positioned to challenge the current social, political and economic order. In this paper I explore the limitations and potentialities of organized social movement-based consciousness' ('global' feminism together with 'global' labour) to disrupt and transcend the hegemonic corporative consciousness that dominates transnationally and that is often associated with the current form of globalization. Essential to this process is an exploration of the relationship between discourse and material conditions of existence. It is in this relationship that the challenges of building 'unities' in a context of complex hybridity might be met. In this way this paper examines political and social power, and the need for new conversations to open up critical spaces between global stakeholders.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Like United States, Taiwan is one of a few countries outside the Islam world where adultery is still preserved in penal codes. Unlike United States, however, where the execution is un(der)enforced albeit over a half of the states keep adultery in the books, adultery in Taiwanese legal practice is a sort of cases which occupy a good portion of the caseloads in the criminal courts.

Although the penal punishment was equally applied to both sexes, feminist activists in Taiwan strived for decades to abolish adultery as a crime. Knowing that most of the adultery convicted was disproportionately “female lovers” who involve in sexual relationship with married men, feminists depicted that the prosecutions of adultery were sexist despite the ostensibly neutral application. However, feminist abolitionists found their major opposition not from conservatives nor religious groups but from women themselves. Married women accused feminists of betraying them by helping husbands shirk the responsibility of their infidelity and by taking side of female lovers.

Feminist abolitionists also face legal obstacles from Constitutional Court. Constitutional Court consecutively made decisions against the claims of the unconstitutionality of adultery by acclaiming the institutional protection of marriage shall override individual’s sexual freedom. This paper will indicate that the legal practices of adultery in Taiwan has developed as a unique scheme, both procedurally and substantively, based on the constitutional interpretations made by Constitutional Court. After examining the pitfalls of the legal scheme, my paper will propose an alternative discourse which will effectively argue against the criminalization of adultery.