Gaslighting and dispelling: Experiences of non-governmental organization workers in navigating gendered corruption

Abstract

How does corruption adopt gendered guises and how do women combat it in practice? Theorising from the basis of a 30-month ethnography within a women’s NGO, the article proposes gaslighting as a way of interpreting gendered corruption, due to its elusive but pernicious nature. Gaslighting is posited as the deployment of tactics to make women doubt their sanity and as a means of securing personal advantage. Gaslighting triggers embodied forms of struggle, and the article offers the notion of dispelling as denoting the persistent, patient and reiterative counter-practice of NGO practitioners to assert democratic norms of liberty and equality. The article provides rich empirical insight both into how corruption is enacted through the citing of patriarchal norms and how such norms are contested through the bodies of practitioners. These insights are important at a time when governments globally claim gender equality while undermining it in practice.

Gaslighting ve Kişilerarası İlişkiler: Sistematik Derleme Çalışması

“…Bhatti et al (2023) thought that men would do more gaslighting because violence against women is more common in countries such as Pakistan where patriarchal social structure is dominant, and they carried out their studies only with women (victims). It has also been claimed in other studies that women are exposed to more gaslighting (Jones 2023, Rodrigues et al 2021, Shousha 2023. These results strengthen the claim of Abramson (2014) and Sweet ( 2019) that gaslighting has a sexist structure.…”

“…Sweet (2019) describes this as social inequality. Disagreements and gaslighting behaviors between government representatives and women NGO advocates may also be due to a power imbalance (Jones 2023). In addition, the power imbalance between men and women in romantic relationships can reveal gaslighting behavior or affect relationship satisfaction (Çaykuş 2020).…”

“…While Twitter users spread distorted or correct information on Trump's rhetoric, 4chan users shared in ways that defended him and blamed the other side. Jones (2023), who conducted a 30-month ethnographic study in Montenegro, 11 months of whom were observers-participants in the field, conveyed her and other participants' gaslighting experiences to theorize the gender-based corrupt order between the government and NGOs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a total of 28 people, 25 women, and 3 men.…”

Why are conflicts about race a point of no return for feminist organizations?

“…3 3 This is close to the idea of “Oppression Olympics”, “whereby groups compete for the mantle of ‘most oppressed’” (Dhamoon, 2011:234), or to the notion of “weaponizing victimhood” (Smolovic Smolović Jones, 2023). …”

Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Resistance: An Intersectional Study of Women’s Entrepreneurship Under Occupation and Patriarchy

“…''Adi,'' (Arabic for ''This is Normal'')-Marrow-of-the-Bone Injustice Injustices that are inflicted at institutional levels are more damaging than those that occur in individual interactions (Jones, 2022). The injustices of occupation and patriarchy have forged their way into the Palestinian mindset, contributing to an overall environment of injustice, making it difficult for women entrepreneurs to acknowledge and understand the occurrence of injustice, resulting in their internalizing and accepting it (Hamamra, 2020).…”