Journal Article

Writing Brave Women : An Exercise in Academic Publishing as Feminist Solidarity

Zulver, Julia, Stallone, Kiran

2025

Overview

What does it mean to be a brave woman? In 2020, we saw Belarusian women take to the streets dressed in white to oppose the violent dictatorship that had been in power for twenty-six years. In 2021, our television screens showed the Fall of Kabul, and the takeover by Taliban fighters, who overnight began to reverse decades of women’s empowerment. In response, and despite the risks, women demonstrators took to the streets in Kabul to demand their rights to work, education, and political participation. And in late 2022, we saw Iranian women fight for freedom, cutting their hair and burning their headscarves as they called for women’s rights in the context of brutal repression. These are but a handful of the myriad examples of women transgressing what is societally expected of them. They go out into the streets, they post on social media, they protest governments and make demands for change. Around the world, we see women being brave. They do so at great personal risk, and often when the potential benefits of being brave are infinitesimally small.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Activists / Dictatorship / Domestic violence / Empowerment / Feminism / Hair / Headscarves / Narratives / Pandemics / Political activism / Political participation / Roads & highways / Scholarly publishing / Social media / Social networks / Television / Women / Womens rights / Writing