Women Voicing Resistance: Discursive and Narrative Explorations

Feminist scholars have demonstrated how ‘dominant discourses’ and ‘master narratives’ frequently reflect patriarchal influence, thereby distorting and depoliticizing women’s storying of their own lives. In this groundbreaking volume a number of internationally recognized researchers, working across a range of disciplines, provide a detailed examination of women’s attempts to counter-story their lives when prevailing discourses are unhelpful or, indeed, harmful. As such, it is an exploration of women’s agency and resistance, which highlights the challenges and complexities of such discursive work.

The chapters explore women’s resistance across a wide range of experiences, including: intimate partner violence, casual sex, depression, premenstrual change, disordered eating, lesbian identity, women’s work in male-dominated spaces, rape, and child birth. Each chapter combines theoretical analyses with illuminating first-hand accounts, and elaborates practical implications that provide directions for individual and social change.

Providing an incisive and comprehensive exploration of discourse, oppression and resistance, that cuts across domains of women’s everyday lives, Women Voicing Resistance will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of psychology, gender studies, women’s studies, sociology, and social work.

Suzanne McKenzie-Mohr is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. Before accepting a faculty position in 2003, Suzanne had been a practicing social worker for 15 years, working with women in a range of fields of practice. Her scholarly interests include women's experiences of rape, trauma and youth homelessness, women’s use of counter-stories in response to oppressive conditions, and narrative care with older adults.

Michelle N. Lafrance is Professor of Psychology at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Michelle's teaching and research interests are in the areas of critical and feminist psychology, including women’s experiences of depression, and the social construction of distress, gender, and sexuality.