Feminist Engagements with the Female Body

Abstract

The feminist movements in the 1970s theorized and contested social norms on female bodies as a central part of women’s oppression. They claimed the right for women to have an active sexuality and birth control, and argued for greater bodily integrity and self-awareness. As a result, a reconfiguration of those norms occurred during the following years. This panel examines the effects of these movements almost fifty years later. Through a historical approach of the norms around female embodiment, we wish to offer some reflections on the feminist contributions to their evolution. We thus address the question of debates within feminism by investigating how past and present feminists are redefining political strategies, collective practices and theoretical insights to rethink the female body. This panel wishes to investigate the following questions: how did and do feminists conceptualize the female body? How do new generations of feminists engage with the inheritance of former struggles regarding the social norms around body issues? Panel organizers: Dina Bader, Edmée Ballif, Lucile Quéré (University of Lausanne)

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