Women in Praise of Women: Female Poets and Female Patrons in Qajar Iran

This study examines the poetry of two women of nineteenth-century Iran—one royal, one non-royal—and the women patrons for whom they composed praise poetry. Through the reconstruction of female-centered patronage networks and associated female-only performance venues, and via an examination of the active roles played by female patrons both in affairs of state and in the management of the immense royal harem, this study highlights the various ways in which members of several generations of women in Qajar Iran were involved in the production, dissemination and appreciation of poetry. It is argued here that these patronage and poetry production networks should be read as evidence of a female-centered literary tradition, one that was in dialogue with (and often intersected) the dominant male tradition; one that empowered the women actors within it to create a sisterhood of poets through which their art could be passed on from mother to daughter, and from daughter to granddaughter (and occasionally from mother to son).     

Visible Men and Elusive Women

Early gender archaeology formulated two statements: men are visible, women are invisible, and men work in hard materials, women work in soft materials. We discuss these dichotomies in connection with nineteenth-century folklore and an excavated eighteenth-century cottage at a summer-farm. We conclude that much of the gendered order-of-work tasks broke down in pragmatic day-to-day life, especially by women crossing the gender border. However, social chaos was held at bay by ritual acts and magic objects.     

On Women's Reason,Education and Love: Women and Men of the Enlightenment in Spain and France

This article is an exploration of the ways in which Enlightenment discourse constructed the sentimental and intellectual ‘nature’ of women and of the ways cultivated women could situate themselves within this context. They were able to produce a discourse which shared Enlightenment arguments but also displayed a vital and intellectual distance from restrictive definitions of femininity. The lives and writings of three eighteenth-century French and Spanish women, Mme d'Épinay, Josefa Amar y Borbón and Inés Joyes y Blake are taken as case-studies. Their participation in the cultural debate of their time and their agreements and disagree-ments with intellectuals and politicians such as Rousseau, Thomas and Cabarrús are examined. The terms of the debate on gender were established in two different national contexts, particularly in regard to the thorny issue of the politics of love and feelings: the similarities and differences between France and Spain are discussed.     

Short-Term Migration Responses of Women and Men during Economic Turmoil: Lessons from Kazakhstan

A team of population specialists from the United States and Kazakhstan uses heretofore unpublished data of the Kazakhstan Statistical Agency to assess gender and age differences in the propensity to migrate from Kazakhstan for the period 1991-2001. The interstate character of the population movements analyzed means that Slavic, German, and other non-Kazakh ethnic groups are disproportionately represented among the emigrant population, but the key focus is on identifying the differing migration responses of men and women during economic crisis, in this case the precipitous decline in economic activity following the dissolution of the USSR. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F22, J61, O15. 2 figures, 4 tables, 21 references.