Contenu du sommaire : Appropriations ordinaires des idées féministes

For a micro-sociological approach of political ideas
Combining the insights of several research fields in social sciences, this paper advocates a micro-sociological perspective on the appropriations of political ideas, taking the case of feminist ideas. The notion of appropriation, coined by socio-history of reading, enables to consider how political ideas are transformed and reshaped when they spread throughout different social spaces. It also allows to pay specific attention to the conditions and types of the ordinary reception of political ideas as well as to the politicization processes at play. In this sense, feminist ideas are a fruitful fieldwork to be investigated regarding the multiple forms of dissemination that they have taken since the 1970s.

Female workers struggling in the years after May 68By studying workers from the Chantelle factory in Saint-Herblain, this article focuses on how women union members considered feminism in theory and in practice. These union members belonged to both the CGT and the CFDT. The two confederations distanced themselves from the universalizing notion of feminism, as well as from established militants of the exteme-left. Nonetheless, they imported some of their ideas and practices in the factory. Most female workers rejected the name of feminism, notably to privilege their specific membership in the working class. However, in the everyday life of the factory, these workers discussed their private lives which made moments of work into moments of mutual assistance and of exchange. During strikes, these workers foregrounded their dignity as laborers of Chantelle. They fashioned themselves just as much as workers as women to combat stigmatizing discourse. By this action, they conquered a new individual and collective identity associated with struggle and insubordination. Thus, this article analyzes how workers deployed their “agency”, that is to say their capacity to position themselves via the gender norms that confined them, notably their normative assignment to domestic work.

Inherited Feminism ?
Drawing on an empirical study on French second-wave feminist activists, this article examines the spread of feminism in their families, a dimension that has received little attention in the literature. More precisely, I examine how a « feminist legacy » is diversely received and appropriated by the feminists' offspring. The first part provides a general overview of these legacies and their mechanisms of transmission. The second part explores four cases of feminists' children in order to illuminate different forms of appropriation, ranging from the interiorization of some feminist contents to political and militant appropriations. Drawing also on the data coming from other cases encountered in the investigation, the analysis points out some general elements that account for the observed variations between the children in the appropriation of the feminist legacy.

Appropriation of feminist ideas and self-transformation through reading
This article takes a sociology of reception approach in order to analyse the role of reading in disseminating feminist ideas among middle-class women. By comparing the cases of women readers taken from two field surveys, one of primarily female reading groups in Lyon, the other of women in Geneva who are sensitive to gender issues, we propose to identify how literary, social sciences and personal development texts encourage the process of gender transgression, or even subversion. This process is made possible by the appropriation of feminist ideas in two differentiated forms : the challenging of norms associated with heterosexual femininity, and women's material and symbolic independence from men.

Inheritance with no testament
Based on a research addressing the transformations of the struggle against domestic violence in France and in the United States, this article shows how feminist ideas and practices that help to understand the phenomenon of domestic violence are spread, used, transformed, and sometimes rejected by non-profit organizations that inherited from the 1970s' feminist movements. This feminist heritage takes different forms in France and in the United States. Firstly, it is rooted in the mental health professional sector in the United States, and in social work in France. Moreover, the relationship to the feminist movements differs according to institutional and political contexts, both on a national and local level. If a feminist identity is “avoided” in the United States, it's clearly highlighted in France. However, on both sides of the Atlantic, the issue of men remains a conflicting point in the organizations.

The goal of gender equality in the implementation of the employment policy in Berlin“Gender mainstreaming” is a method of promotion of gender equality goals carried out by the European Union, institutionalizing feminist approaches. To what extent has this method fostered the diffusion of gender equality goals in public policies, outside the boundaries of state feminism ? This article tackles this question by exploring the implementation of employment policy in Berlin during the 2000s. It shows that even if the work of some “gender mainstreaming advocates” has led to a certain institutionalization of the theme of equality in the employment sector, the re-appropriation of this goal by employment policy actors remains limited. This can be accounted for by the concrete modalities of gender mainstreaming implementation and by the existence of normative and cognitive resistances from the employment sector actors.

Feminists or “Postfeminists”?
In contrast to popular presumptions and prior research on women of the « postfeminist » generation, this study found an appreciation for recent historical changes in women's opportunities, and an awareness of persisting inequalities and discrimination. The findings reveal support for feminist goals, coupled with ambiguity about the concept of feminism. Although some of the women could be categorised along a continuum of feminist identification, half were « fence-sitters » or were unable to articulate a position. There were variations in perspectives among those with different life experiences, as well as by racial and class background.