Fifty years of fighting sex discrimination: undermining entrenched misogynies through recognition and everyday resistance

Gilmore, Sarah ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3556-2532 2024. Fifty years of fighting sex discrimination: undermining entrenched misogynies through recognition and everyday resistance. Human Relations

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Abstract

This paper marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of the UK’s Sex Discrimination Act (1975). The UK offers an important historical case study of how such laws are, or are not, translated into practice. The success of the Act is mixed: there has been progress but much more needs to be done. In this study we seek understanding of the mechanisms through which changes, albeit limited, have been made, with the aim of identifying strategies for continuing progress towards equalities. Using a feminist methodology of researching differently within an archive of memories, and the under-utilized work of feminist psychoanalytical theorist Jessica Benjamin, we identify that women engaged in micro-revolutions involving everyday strategies of resistance. Over time these accumulate and bring about changes on which we can continue to build. The paper, firstly, contributes a theory of women’s agency as quiet revolutionaries, secondly it pushes forward feminist theories of recognition, and finally it advances methods of researching differently.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	0018-7267
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	17 September 2024
Date of Acceptance:	31 July 2024
Last Modified:	18 Sep 2024 09:17
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/172050

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