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Kate (Kathryn) Hart

School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck
UBEL Pathway: Gender and Sexuality
Supervisor: Dr. Sean Brady (principal), Birkbeck Dr. Afaf Jabiri (co-supervisor), UEL
Contact details: khart16@student.bbk.ac.uk
About Me:

I graduated for my BSc in European Union Studies and French/Spanish at the University of Cardiff in 2003 and went on to live and work in France for twenty years across public sector and civil society roles in aid, gender equality and women’s rights. In between, I returned to studying part-time as a young mother and completed my MSc in Poverty Reduction from SOAS in 2013.  Outside of academia, I am a co-founder and volunteer for several non-profits working on domestic violence and harmful gender stereotypes. In my spare time, when not refereeing my children’s bickering, I like writing fiction, poetry and running with a good podcast. 

My Research:

Action to tackle gender inequality and violence against women cannot hope to be successful or sustainable without an understanding of the roots of gendered power relations – and within that, masculinities – which enable and sustain inequality. My research intends to address this omission through a socio-historical comparison of masculinities and women’s agency in France and Britain in the 1980s. Focusing on case studies of women’s participation in protest movements as a proxy for understanding the concept of ‘agency’, I will examine how the performance of different masculinities in women’s everyday lives influences their ability to join and maintain circles of social protest, exerting their agency.

Impact of My Research:

 

Understanding how masculinities impact women’s agency – in this case through the prism of men’s influence on women’s participation in social protest – is essential in order to inform and improve public policy on gender equality. Such policy is often politically driven, short-term and focused only on buzzwords of ‘empowerment’ without sufficient understanding of what agency actually entails in a context of gender power relations.  A country comparative approach (France-Britain) will be useful in identifying common or differentiating factors in the construction, performance and influence of masculinities in women’s everyday lives. Case studies which are broader than just ‘women’s issues’ or ‘feminist protest’ – including but not limited to the Brixton uprisings of 1981 in Britain, and the 1983 Equality March from Marseilles to Paris in France – will enable an intersectional lens, particularly of race and class, in examining gender power relations in both countries in the 1980s.