Graduate Seminar Series 2026/27 - Session 1
First Seminar
Gendered Institutions: Power, Policy and Feminist Transformation
November 12, 2026
Click on this link to join the seminar at 15:00 (GMT).
Şefika Özer
Nottingham Trent University
Evolving Perspectives of Muslim Feminists Regarding Gender, State and Religion in Turkey
The Muslim women’s rights movement in Turkey began in the 1980s and 1990s, especially after the state banned the wearing of the Islamic headscarf at universities. This was part of a renewed secular agenda following a government policy change. However, the Muslim women in the movement never identified themselves as feminists. Since 2015, a shift occurred as a new feminist movement emerged among Muslim women in Turkey, highlighted by the founding of the first Muslim feminist association in 2018. This is an important development because feminism has always been historically associated with secularism and secular people as an ideology and a movement in Turkey. This paper aims to explore the evolution of secular perspectives among Muslim feminists in Turkey, examining the similarities and differences in their journeys. Additionally, the study aims to investigate how these feminists situate themselves in relation to other women’s movements in Turkey and the social, historical and political contexts they are embedded in. This study adopts a qualitative research design, utilising the two qualitative research methods: in-depth interviews and participant observation. Interviews with Muslim feminists are conducted to explore their unique journeys in reaching their current ideological position regarding feminism, secularism and religion. Also, data is gathered during active participation in public meetings of Muslim feminist organisations in Turkey. In addition to the speeches during the meetings, the interaction between the organisation's members is also explored to understand how they resist the patriarchal structures in society as a community.
Sofiya Volvakova
University College Dublin
Left Behind: Gendered Disparities in School Exclusions across England and Northern Ireland
A growing number of school exclusions such as suspensions and expulsions in the United Kingdom (UK) have been the focus of much public debate and sociological discussion in recent years. Furthermore, an increasing body of literature reports on disproportionality within disciplinary decisions, highlighting that punitive measures affect the most vulnerable and marginalised students first. However, few studies in the context of the UK have taken a comparative perspective when investigating disproportionality within a growing number of school exclusion decisions. Using cross-national publicly available official statistics and data from Freedom of Information Requests (FOI) from the Department of Education (England) and Department for Education (Northern Ireland), this paper tracks the evolution of school exclusions over time and investigates whether disproportionality still holds true when comparing a country with a high number of exclusions (England) and a low number of exclusions (Northern Ireland). The findings reveal a notable rise in the number of school exclusion following the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, alongside persistent disproportionality regarding the exclusion of boys, both historically and at present times. The paper concludes that more robust monitoring and deeper qualitative inquiries are urgently needed across both national contexts.
Meike Schneiders
London School of Economics (LSE)
A Perfect Match- Combining Care and Justice for Transformative Feminist Policy
After 40 years of feminist policies, they still have relatively little impact. In this paper, I argue for this to be the case because neoliberal feminism, which is dominant in politics, is unable to fulfill the criteria of a transformative feminist policy. To unleash its potential for change, I claim that supplementation of current moral reasoning processes focusing on justice with Care Ethics is needed. Justice and Care need to be combined to compensate for their respective weaknesses. To enable caring and meaningful caring relationships in society I detect three barriers that need to be removed initiated by the state: profit in the care economy, gender stereotypes in everyday life, and assumed gender neutrality in policy making. This problem analysis is supported by proposals for concrete measures to be taken by the state.
Dhrupti Singh
Aston University
Beyond Gender? Extending Feminist Institutionalism to Institutions Child Sexual Abuse
Feminist theory has provided important insights into the gendered operation of institutions, particularly in explaining women’s experiences of sexual harassment, discrimination, and silencing. This paper argues that feminist institutionalism (FI) can be extended to examine institutional child sexual abuse (CSA), an area that remains comparatively underdeveloped within feminist institutional analysis. Drawing on cases of alleged CSA associated with British political institutions, the study examines how institutional power, gendered norms, and practices of silencing shape both experiences of abuse and institutional responses. FI conceptualises institutions as constituted through formal rules and informal norms that are gendered and embedded within everyday institutional practices (Guido, Walsh and Banaszak, 2023; Kenny and Mackay, 2009). This perspective is valuable for examining how constructions of masculinity, authority, credibility, and vulnerability influence which allegations are recognised, suppressed, or marginalised (Mackay, Kenny and Chappell, 2010). By bringing children more centrally into feminist institutional analysis, the paper explores how power operates across age as well as gender, and how institutional cultures may enable abuse and subsequent silencing. It ultimately considers how feminist theory can be expanded to better account for the institutional dynamics surrounding CSA.