Email this article Intertwined gender inequality in Desy Anwar’s "Growing Pains"
Dina Dyah Kusumayanti, Jember University, Indonesia
Abstract
Rooted within structures of patriarchy and modern life, gender equality seems still far from achieved. Providing social issues like gender inequality, literary works become reliable proof to portray subordination or discrimination against women. Thus, this study aspires to strive for women empowerment and re-educating men expectantly to tackle the problems of gender inequality. Desy Anwar’s Growing Pains is interlaced with gender issues in five chapters. This research aims to unveil a range of gender conflicts and the efforts of the female main characters to overcome the hardships in life. Descriptive criticism is employed as a method of analysis. Following Lazar’s Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (2014), the linguistic data in the form of lexical choices, phrases, and clauses are first identified based on the language features indicating gender inequality or violence. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s language theory (2013) is applied in unraveling the details of linguistic evidence. Then, interpreting the discursive logic is correlated with the cultural realm of the novel Hence, the findings yield that all the selected lexicons, phrases, and clauses of the novel construct the meanings of gender issues. Socio-cultural experiences represent forms of gender-based violence such as asymmetrical family systems, misogynistic practices, gender-identity threatening, deviant female promiscuity, and cruel motherhood portrayal. The symbolic and psychological impacts are also identified, referring to post-patriarchal regimes. Although there seems to be effortful survival in masculine domination, both internal and external factors are in support of constructed gender inequalities. Eventually, all the female characters are demonstrated as the vulnerably subordinated subjects of neoliberal hegemony. This research fervently aims to recall the awareness of symbolic gender violence due to ongoing powers that halt the emergence of gender equality and reshape it into hegemonic strategies.
Keywords: hegemony, inequality, misogyny, patriarchy, symbolic violence
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Akgul, F. (2017). Patriarchal theory reconsidered: Torture and gender-based violence in Turkey. PhD thesis University of Westminster Politics and International Relations https://doi.org/10.34737/9z94z.
Akhter, T. (2020). Gender inequality and literature: A contemporary issue. 6th International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (ICOSAPS 2020), 593–596. https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/icosaps-20/125949674
Amir, M. A., Ali, S., & Qadri, F. A. (2020). Feminist critical discourse analysis of the stone woman by Tariq Ali. https://web.archive.org/web/20220519105914id_/
https://www.glrjournal.com/jadmin/Auther/31rvIolA2LALJouq9hkR/O0YCwYo2lU.pdf
Arivia, G., & Subono, N. I. (2017). A hundred years of feminism in Indonesia. An Analysis of Actors, Debates and Strategies. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Jakarta: Fes, Country Study. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indonesien/13830.pdf
Aspinall, E., White, S., & Savirani, A. (2021). Women’s political representation in Indonesia: Who Wins and How? Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 40(1), 3–27.
Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and gender. Cambridge University Press.
Fakhrshafaie, N. (2020). Misogyny in Women’s Literature: A comparative study of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Zoya Pirzad’s I’ll Turn off the Lights. Journal of Comparative Literature, 12(22), 149–172. http://ensani.ir/file/download/article/1608462933-9814-22-7.pdf
Febriani, M., Setyaningsih, N. H., & Fernando, L. (2022). Konstruksi nilai perjuangan perempuan dalam Novel Ibu Doa yang Hilang dan implikasinya sebagai konten pembelajaran sastra yang berperspektif gender. Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa Dan Sastra Indonesia, 11(2), 96–104. https://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/jpbsi/article/view/61914
Fowler, R. (2013). Linguistics and novel. Routledge.
Ging, D., & Siapera, E. (2018). Special issue on online misogyny. In Feminist media studies (Vol. 18, Issue 4, pp. 515–524). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447345
Ishikawa, C. (2016). Her Self in the Making: Female Promiscuity in Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry. The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan, 2016(15), 25–42. https://doi.org/10.20687/englishalsj.2016.15_25
James, D. (2012). Modernist Futures: Innovation and Inheritance in the Contemporary Novel. Cambridge University Press.
Juhana, J., Qalbi, N., & Arfani, S. (2021). Gender inequality in the novel “Death of an Ex-Minister” by Nawal El Saadawi. Eralingua: Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa Asing Dan Sastra, 5(1), 107–119. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/56a4/e23aad0b9dcebb49b96a151885bc22c9f1b1.pdf
Kalauserang, E. D. (2023). The The Representation of Mothers as Bearers of culture in three short stories from Indonesia. NOTION: Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture, 5(1), 93–106.
Lazar, M. M. (2014). Feminist critical discourse analysis. The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 180–199. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118584248.ch9
Mir, S., & Jahangir, S. (2021). A Critical discourse analysis of gender subjectivity in Henry James’the Portrait of a Lady. European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies, 5(2). https://oapub.org/lit/index.php/EJLLL/article/view/275
Muhammad, L. N., & Khan, M. Z. (2021). Ideological discursive representation of femininity: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Nadia in the novel (Exit West). http://www.ijlrhss.com/paper/volume-4-issue-2/4-HSS-838.pdf
Muzakka, M., & Suyanto, S. (2020). The gender equality struggles in the novel of Perempuan Berkalung Sorban and Gadis Pantai. Jurnal Poetika, 8(2), 194. https://doi.org/10.22146/poetika.v8i2.60528
Nartey, M. (2021). A feminist critical discourse analysis of Ghanaian feminist blogs. Feminist Media Studies, 21(4), 657–672. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1837910
Nilan, P., Demartoto, A., Broom, A., & Germov, J. (2014). Indonesian men’s perceptions of violence against women. Violence against Women, 20(7), 869–888. https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/31844569/25585568_published_article.pdf
Richardson‐Self, L. (2018). Woman‐Hating: On misogyny, sexism, and hate speech. Hypatia, 33(2), 256–272. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1111/hypa.12398
Saptiadi, N. A. P., Trisnawati, R. K., & Agustina, M. F. (2022). Post-structural feminism to fight Kyriarchy: A case of black widow (2021). Language Circle: Journal of Language and Literature, 17(1), 140–149. https://doi.org/10.15294/lc.v17i1.36317
Siboro, M. (2023). Gender ideology and power relations in Sahebjam’s Stoning of Soraya M: A feminist critical discourse analysis. Litera, 22(2), 149–158. https://doi.org/10.21831/ltr.v22i2.60447
Stoneley, P. (2020). Promiscuity in Western Literature. Routledge.
Toliver, S. R. (2020). Eliminating extermination, fostering existence: Diverse dystopian fiction and female adolescent identity. Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, 187–202.
Trivedi, R., & Tiwari, R. (2016). Patriarchal system and the condition of women. Notions. https://anubooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/N-4.-2016-21.pdf
Ulfah, R. M., & Wuryanta, A. G. E. W. (2018). No More Equal: Critical discourse of symbolic violence to woman in the television. E3S Web of Conferences, 73, 14011. https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/abs/2018/48/e3sconf_icenis18_14011/e3sconf_icenis18_14011.html
Valentina, T. R., & Safitri, C. (2022). Minang women in the patriarchy cultural Maelstrom: viewed from the view of religion and culture. ICGCS 2021: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Gender, Culture and Society, ICGCS 2021, 30-31 August 2021, Padang, Indonesia, 248. http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/eai.30-8-2021.2316280 https://eudl.eu/pdf/10.4108/eai.30-8-2021.2316280
Weatherall, A. (2002). Gender, language and discourse. Psychology Press.
Wuschitz, S., & Reza, A. (2021). Coded feminisms in Indonesia. Proceedings of Polititcs of the Machines-Rogue Research 2021 3, 235–246. https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/fd0bf753-b77c-401e-9e12-2eed7bbdf1d7/ScienceOpen/235_Wuschitz_POM21.pdf
Zaidi, S. (2017). “Let Him Who is without Sin Cast the First Stone”: A Feminist CDA of gender bias in paradise lost. ELF Annual Research Journal, 199–214. https://tehqeeqat.org/english/articleDetails/34401
Zhou, Z. (2021). Feminist critical theory: An analysis of the changing image of women in female leader online novel. International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2021), 742–745.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21831/ltr.v22i3.63225
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
______________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Litera Journal is published by the Faculty of Languages, Arts, and Culture Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta in collaboration with Himpunan Sarjana Kesusasteraan Indonesia (HISKI)
The International Journal of Linguistic, Literature, and Its Teaching at http://http://journal.uny.ac.id/index.php/litera/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
__________________________________________________________________________________________________